I am suffering from a terrible case of vacation poisoning.
Lest anyone think that this is an actual gastrointestinal disorder or that "vacation" is also the latin name of some sort of amoebic parasite, let me put your mind at ease: I am talking about the pit-of-the-stomach anxiety that comes from having to go back to work after two nearly back to back vacations at resort towns on the Red Sea.
My brother arrived in Cairo about four weeks ago and we immediately left on a six day trip to the Sinai Peninsula town of Dahab for some SCUBA diving and relaxing. Thomas was coming from a month in Brazil and had the kind of tan you'd expect from such an adventure. I on the other hand was the exact color of his butt.
My week in Dahab and the following weekend in the far snootier resort town of Sharm el Sheikh as given me a toasty glow but my brain now rejects the mundane tasks I'm assigned like work as if I am now allergic to office-induced boredom. I keep pretending my pen is a hand grenade and energetically pull off the cap again and again.
We are now reviewing the comments we wrote as we went through our correspondence review. We are reviewing our review. Which, although it is less boring, as promised, is only marginally less boring when I think we were all hoping for significantly less boring. Another highlight of my day was correcting punctuation. You know how tables and graphs often have a line or two beneath them listing the source of the data? I was correcting those mini-paragraphs for extra spaces, missing commas and the occasional hyphen. Good thing I got that expensive law degree.
Keeping my life interesting are the people in my office, and of course my brother.
Thomas has picked up three volunteer jobs with three different refugee aid organizations here in Cairo while he waits (ahem...on a mattress on my bedroom floor...indefinitely) for the Sudanese "elections" to peacefully resolve. Unfortunately, for the elections to conclude, they have to actually begin, which they seem to be having trouble doing. Voting for Bashir (since the primary opposition candidate withdrew two weeks ago) was extended for two days because by the day the elections were suppose to end, they had not even begun yet in some areas. It is possible that the US is supporting these "elections" and that the Southern candidate withdrew as part of a deal with Khartoum to get the promised referendum for Southern independence on the ballot next year and uphold the terms of the 2005 ceasefire. But it is also more than possible that the Sudanese people are not in on the deal and conditions could be too unstable for Thomas to safely go to Sudan.
In other news, my German coworker accidentally adopted an owl yesterday. The boys in her supermarket found it on the street, a helpless lost baby, and took it in to show off to customers and generally parade around as an oddity. They weren't taking care of it though and it seemed distressed and frightened so my coworker took it away from them but now she is stuck with an owl. A FREAKING BABY OWL!!! She tried to feed it small pieces of veal last night but it seemed more interested in pecking at her thumbs. Do baby owls eat living food? Do their mothers descend to their nexts with squiggling baby mice? Or thumbs?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
White Taxi Blues
So this morning I waived down a cab at my usual spot, took the usual route, arrived at my usual destination in front of my office and got charged over 1/3 the usual price. Now, granted, I should have been paying closer attention on my ten minute ride to work. I shouldn't have relaxed and read my book. I should have compulsively checked the meter and told the driver immediately when I noticed the cost was rising at 130% its normal rate. But silly me, I assumed my driver was an honest guy and his meter hadn't been tampered with and didn't notice the cost "adjustment."
I pay 10 pounds on a 7 pound bill every day to and from work because I'm a nice girl and know drivers are poor so I tip well. Still without noticing the meter, I asked if the driver had change for a twenty and he said he didn't. This is absurd because most rides are at least 5 pounds so the idea that he didn't have ten pounds already by ten in the morning just from fares is impossible, not to mention he had to have his own money on him separate from his fares. So, still assuming the meter was the usual price, I gave him the seven pounds I had and walked off. He started honking and screaming at me like crazy and I, still not realizing the meter price was way high, walked back to see what his problem was, after all, I'd paid the cost of the ride, just not the tip I usually give because I was pissed he wouldn't give me change.
So then we got in a big fight out in front of the bank across the street from my office. Two guards came over to help and I said that I wanted to pay ten but he wouldn't give me change and they said I should go into the bank to get change. This is total bullshit, as the custom dictates that the driver is the one who has to get change, since it is his job, but still, I'm flexible, so I agree to go into the bank. In that instant two things happen. A very nice, adorable (he looks like Woddy from Toy Story as a teenager) Egyptian lawyer who works in my firm came over to ask what the problem was, and the driver pointed out that I owed him 10.95 pounds, not 10. I was horrified because not only was this way over what I normally pay, it is also not possible on a working meter since they go up in increments of .25.
Plus it was embarrassing that I was having this argument over about 80 cents in front of the lawyer from my firm but he and the guards didn't believe the meter was rigged. Every foreigner I know has experienced a rigged meter at least once. The white taxis are part of a government initiative to get the ancient and probably dangerous black and white taxis off the streets but the meters give the driver a lower rate than they could probably negotiate with tourists (i.e. white people) in their old black and white cabs. So they get the meter "fixed" so they can hit a button during the ride and increase the rate of the meter. Drivers don't do this to Egyptians so Egyptians don't believe it happens. The lawyer I know translated what I said to the guards at the bank and they all had a good chuckle and said "He'd be very smart if he could do that." Right. Like the same mechanics who keep black and white taxis working day after day for over 30 years with nothing but coathanger wire, tape, and a copy of the Koran holding them together couldn't also rig a white taxi meter.
So the lawyer gave HIS 20 pounds to the driver who went into the bank and gave him 10 in change and I paid him back. But THEN I got a little lecture about how if I think the driver is cheating me, I should tell him right away (again with the whole watch the meter and recalculate the fare every kilometer to make sure you're not being cheated on your whole ride to work scenario). This despite the fact that when you tell a driver his meter isn't working he says "it's fine, if you don't like the fare, talk to the government." The lawyer also told me that if I wanted the price to be negotiable, I could always take a black and white taxi, which I often do, but I pay them the same ten pounds I pay the white taxi. There's no "negotiating" about it because it is a very good price and much more than an Egyptian would pay for the same ride. Finally, despite the fact that the whole fight in the street had been in Arabic, including me telling the guards that the meter was too fast, that I take the same route every day and never have to pay more than ten pounds, etc. he also said "and you should speak a little Arabic." I know he just doesn't want to see me have problems in his country and he is saying these things because he wants the best for me, but right then I wanted to smoosh his adorable, carefully coiffed head!
Karmic justice - the driver, by being dishonest, cheated himself out of the feeling of getting a good tip. Because if he'd charged me the 7.5 pounds he was supposed to, and given my the correct change like he was supposed to, he would have driven off happily with ten pounds, freely and peacefully given. Instead, because he got my tab up to almost 11, he has the bad feeling of having almost got caught cheating, on top of the bad feeling of, in his mind, having been cheated out of that one pound he didn't earn in the first place.
Angry angry angry.
I pay 10 pounds on a 7 pound bill every day to and from work because I'm a nice girl and know drivers are poor so I tip well. Still without noticing the meter, I asked if the driver had change for a twenty and he said he didn't. This is absurd because most rides are at least 5 pounds so the idea that he didn't have ten pounds already by ten in the morning just from fares is impossible, not to mention he had to have his own money on him separate from his fares. So, still assuming the meter was the usual price, I gave him the seven pounds I had and walked off. He started honking and screaming at me like crazy and I, still not realizing the meter price was way high, walked back to see what his problem was, after all, I'd paid the cost of the ride, just not the tip I usually give because I was pissed he wouldn't give me change.
So then we got in a big fight out in front of the bank across the street from my office. Two guards came over to help and I said that I wanted to pay ten but he wouldn't give me change and they said I should go into the bank to get change. This is total bullshit, as the custom dictates that the driver is the one who has to get change, since it is his job, but still, I'm flexible, so I agree to go into the bank. In that instant two things happen. A very nice, adorable (he looks like Woddy from Toy Story as a teenager) Egyptian lawyer who works in my firm came over to ask what the problem was, and the driver pointed out that I owed him 10.95 pounds, not 10. I was horrified because not only was this way over what I normally pay, it is also not possible on a working meter since they go up in increments of .25.
Plus it was embarrassing that I was having this argument over about 80 cents in front of the lawyer from my firm but he and the guards didn't believe the meter was rigged. Every foreigner I know has experienced a rigged meter at least once. The white taxis are part of a government initiative to get the ancient and probably dangerous black and white taxis off the streets but the meters give the driver a lower rate than they could probably negotiate with tourists (i.e. white people) in their old black and white cabs. So they get the meter "fixed" so they can hit a button during the ride and increase the rate of the meter. Drivers don't do this to Egyptians so Egyptians don't believe it happens. The lawyer I know translated what I said to the guards at the bank and they all had a good chuckle and said "He'd be very smart if he could do that." Right. Like the same mechanics who keep black and white taxis working day after day for over 30 years with nothing but coathanger wire, tape, and a copy of the Koran holding them together couldn't also rig a white taxi meter.
So the lawyer gave HIS 20 pounds to the driver who went into the bank and gave him 10 in change and I paid him back. But THEN I got a little lecture about how if I think the driver is cheating me, I should tell him right away (again with the whole watch the meter and recalculate the fare every kilometer to make sure you're not being cheated on your whole ride to work scenario). This despite the fact that when you tell a driver his meter isn't working he says "it's fine, if you don't like the fare, talk to the government." The lawyer also told me that if I wanted the price to be negotiable, I could always take a black and white taxi, which I often do, but I pay them the same ten pounds I pay the white taxi. There's no "negotiating" about it because it is a very good price and much more than an Egyptian would pay for the same ride. Finally, despite the fact that the whole fight in the street had been in Arabic, including me telling the guards that the meter was too fast, that I take the same route every day and never have to pay more than ten pounds, etc. he also said "and you should speak a little Arabic." I know he just doesn't want to see me have problems in his country and he is saying these things because he wants the best for me, but right then I wanted to smoosh his adorable, carefully coiffed head!
Karmic justice - the driver, by being dishonest, cheated himself out of the feeling of getting a good tip. Because if he'd charged me the 7.5 pounds he was supposed to, and given my the correct change like he was supposed to, he would have driven off happily with ten pounds, freely and peacefully given. Instead, because he got my tab up to almost 11, he has the bad feeling of having almost got caught cheating, on top of the bad feeling of, in his mind, having been cheated out of that one pound he didn't earn in the first place.
Angry angry angry.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Garbage, snot, and shopping.
The garbage man just came to the door. We are supposed to either pay our doorman (actually a family of teenagers headed by what appears to be a single mom) or pay the zabaleen, the very poor, very old men who sweep the garbage from the streets and take it away. We aren’t supposed to have to pay both and we’ve been paying the door-family but I just can’t bring myself to tell the garbage man. The zabaleen are the closest thing Cairo has to a recycling/waste management system, as they pick through the garbage by hand and find every item with a potential use or value. The organic garbage used to be fed to pigs but last year the authorities killed all the pigs out of fear of swine flu. Pigs are unclean in Islam and in a country without healthcare for the poor, swine flu created quite a bit of paranoia that the government resolved by convincing people that the pigs were the source of the danger. Kill the pigs and the flu goes away. Unfortunately, now organic trash goes with the leftover inorganic trash (the stuff with no use or value to the zabaleen) to the outskirts of Cairo where the very, very poor live in plastic villages made out of tarps and garbage and stink. We pay the man who came to my door ten pounds ($2) per month. I will keep paying him because I can’t tell him I’m already paying someone else. What’s $2 a month to me?
I was hanging out my laundry the other night when I heard a short, loud whooshing noise in the dark above me and to my right. It happened again and again and I felt a little cloud of dampness on my cheek. My upstairs neighbor was blowing his nose farmer’s style off his balcony! “Hey!” I yelled. “SNOOSH” came again. I stepped back a little out of range and yelled again. “HEY!” “Oh!” came the startled reply (he didn’t know he had an audience). “Sorry. Sorry.” He said twice and then hurriedly stepped back to what was apparently an apartment bereft of Kleenex, toilet paper, paper towels and rags of all types. In the morning, I noticed that although his balcony was set off to the right of mine and that therefore my newly hung laundry missed the brunt of the snot shower but the apartment below me has a balcony that lines up perfectly with Mr. Snotty McSnotfest upstairs. And the woman who lives downstairs had her laundry out too!
The constant stress of living in Cairo is having a surprising effect on my health. I’ve lost around twenty-five pounds. Unfortunately, I’m still too big to wear most off the rack clothes at the mall but I am now a little too small to buy off the rack in the XXL shops either. Which means I go naked most of the time. No. Kidding. I still go to the mall, it just takes me forever to find clothes. I had a particularly Egyptian shopping experience last weekend when my roommate and I walked into a store on our way to H&M (the only H&M in Egypt is more expensive even than in Europe, but the clothes don’t have weird frills, sequins, mirrored buttons, build in “bodies” (these are skin-tight long-sleeved shirts women wear under what would otherwise be Vegas showgirl outfits to make them acceptable to wear out and about), or any other Egypt-fashionable accessories).
A young employee who obviously works on commission saw two foreigners stroll in and rushed over to help us, which meant demanding our size whenever we paused to look at an item and then looking through each one on the rack until he either found our size or didn’t. Basically what we would do if we were permitted to shop on our own. I was looking for basic dress shirts, a surprisingly elusive target, and extra frustrating since most of the men’s shirts here look like women’s shirts. They’re often pink or lavender, slightly tailored in at the waist and just generally seem to be rubbing it in that there are no women’s dress shirts that don’t seem to come complete with gills or lizard-like ribbed collars. Anyway, I digress. So I pause in front of a white, collared button-down shirt with black pinstripes, the only flaw of which was spherical shiny black buttons, that I could get my tailor to replace. The boy asked what my size was and I told him 48. His eyes went wide like he didn’t even know sizes went up that high. “No, no 48,” he said, without even checking through the rack. Then, he sort of roused himself from his shock and thumbed unenthusiastically through the few shirts. “No 48,” he said again, “44.” He actually made a counter-offer! Like we were going to negotiate about what size shirt I wear and inevitably compromise on 46. If only my pot belly would go along with the plan, we (my belly and I) could have made a killer deal!
I was hanging out my laundry the other night when I heard a short, loud whooshing noise in the dark above me and to my right. It happened again and again and I felt a little cloud of dampness on my cheek. My upstairs neighbor was blowing his nose farmer’s style off his balcony! “Hey!” I yelled. “SNOOSH” came again. I stepped back a little out of range and yelled again. “HEY!” “Oh!” came the startled reply (he didn’t know he had an audience). “Sorry. Sorry.” He said twice and then hurriedly stepped back to what was apparently an apartment bereft of Kleenex, toilet paper, paper towels and rags of all types. In the morning, I noticed that although his balcony was set off to the right of mine and that therefore my newly hung laundry missed the brunt of the snot shower but the apartment below me has a balcony that lines up perfectly with Mr. Snotty McSnotfest upstairs. And the woman who lives downstairs had her laundry out too!
The constant stress of living in Cairo is having a surprising effect on my health. I’ve lost around twenty-five pounds. Unfortunately, I’m still too big to wear most off the rack clothes at the mall but I am now a little too small to buy off the rack in the XXL shops either. Which means I go naked most of the time. No. Kidding. I still go to the mall, it just takes me forever to find clothes. I had a particularly Egyptian shopping experience last weekend when my roommate and I walked into a store on our way to H&M (the only H&M in Egypt is more expensive even than in Europe, but the clothes don’t have weird frills, sequins, mirrored buttons, build in “bodies” (these are skin-tight long-sleeved shirts women wear under what would otherwise be Vegas showgirl outfits to make them acceptable to wear out and about), or any other Egypt-fashionable accessories).
A young employee who obviously works on commission saw two foreigners stroll in and rushed over to help us, which meant demanding our size whenever we paused to look at an item and then looking through each one on the rack until he either found our size or didn’t. Basically what we would do if we were permitted to shop on our own. I was looking for basic dress shirts, a surprisingly elusive target, and extra frustrating since most of the men’s shirts here look like women’s shirts. They’re often pink or lavender, slightly tailored in at the waist and just generally seem to be rubbing it in that there are no women’s dress shirts that don’t seem to come complete with gills or lizard-like ribbed collars. Anyway, I digress. So I pause in front of a white, collared button-down shirt with black pinstripes, the only flaw of which was spherical shiny black buttons, that I could get my tailor to replace. The boy asked what my size was and I told him 48. His eyes went wide like he didn’t even know sizes went up that high. “No, no 48,” he said, without even checking through the rack. Then, he sort of roused himself from his shock and thumbed unenthusiastically through the few shirts. “No 48,” he said again, “44.” He actually made a counter-offer! Like we were going to negotiate about what size shirt I wear and inevitably compromise on 46. If only my pot belly would go along with the plan, we (my belly and I) could have made a killer deal!
Friday, February 26, 2010
A lazy Prophet's birthday at home
Sleepy puppy unconsciously burrowing closer to my left buttcheek? Check.
A good spy thriller? Check.
Comfy Brooklyn sweatshirt? Check (thanks Uncle Charlie!).
Cappuccino and a piece of chocolate cake DELIVERED TO MY DOOR? Check!
It is pretty much a perfect Friday afternoon. The maid (who lives downstairs) failed to show up for the third time last night (think we’re getting a new maid) so Marisol and I cleaned the apartment. Not really well, since we’ll eventually get a pro in here but well enough that I’m not cringing every time I put my foot down on something dusty or squishy or something that used to be a delivery menu I wanted to use but is now a pile of tiny pieces of paper covered in puppy saliva. Marisol swept (and I’m considering mopping tonight as well, I know, big plans!) while I de-slimed the stovetop and washed every dish and stick of silverware we own. So I can get into the kitchen now, though I haven’t gone grocery shopping this week there is really no need. Nothing to cook.
It might have to stay that way until tomorrow to. Today is the Prophet’s birthday so it is an official government and religious holiday weekend. Not many stores are open. I have errands to run besides the grocery shopping. My brother is coming to visit in a couple weeks and I need to pick up a mattress and a phone for him to use while he’s here. Also, I promised myself a bookshelf after payday as a reward for getting through the month.
There have been big shakeups at my office in the last few weeks so it has been a difficult month. I think I absorb more ambient stress than I realize because even though I don’t really know the people involved it was still really difficult to concentrate on my work. I went from reading an average of 220 letters a day to struggling to make 100. It is better now. One of our senior attorneys left the firm and left the LAW to follow a more spiritual path of studying reiki and teaching yoga. She did this after centering our entire correspondence review procedure around the way her mind needed it to work in order to process the information and draft our Statement of Claim, the central document we will submit explaining our client’s case. I’m glad she’s off to do something that will hopefully be really fulfilling and, after less than two months in a firm I can definitely understand how you could run yourself into the ground doing this for a lifetime, but since the whole system of information gathering was set up under the assumption that she was writing the SOC, she is kind of leaving us in the lurch.
We have rallied surprisingly well. She was only my supervisor for a week so I never experienced this but rumor has it she could be moody and, though a good teacher and friend when in a good mood, she could be unkind and somewhat maniacally ruthless in a bad mood. The tension in the office now that she is gone has palpably decreased. The other senior attorney working on the case has less management experience but he has definitely rallied. There was another scare last week when he had to leave for Canada for the whole week on emergency family leave but he is back and seems to be solidly picking up the slack where the other attorney left off. It is a little terrifying to feel so unprepared for what is coming when we finish the correspondence review in the next couple weeks, but also exciting because we will all get to do the kind of work we normally wouldn’t get to do until after we’d been at the firm for a year or so.
I am learning a lot more about how construction contracts work, which is a good thing, because it helps me do my job better and feel more invested in the work of the firm, but it is also a bad thing, since I honestly don’t really care how construction contracts work beyond the barest veneer of purely academic interest. In my soul, I am not a construction lawyer.
I am starting to wonder if in my soul I am a lawyer at all. I had an annoying conversation last night with a woman I work with that has picked open this old question in my brain that I thought had finally scarred over after I found happy employment and now it is festering again. She is incredibly smart and very intense about her work. Her brightest dream is to become an arbitrator of the highest degree and sit down with a cup of coffee to pour over two brilliantly written claims and determine who is right and what they are entitled to under the law. When she talks about the day she will get to do this, her eyes light up with actual joy at the thought of reading legal arguments. My eyes glaze over.
Anyway, she gave me a ride home last night during the biggest, longest thundering rainstorm I have seen since I’ve been in Cairo. Supposedly it actually HAILED out in Maadi, a neighborhood about 30 minutes away. People actually emailed the listserve about it in wonder. In my neighborhood it was just rain but since Cairo never gets rain there aren’t really any street gutters to speak of so the streets fill with deep puddles that run for ten, even fifteen yards and cover the entire width of the street. Cars that roll in too quickly or too slowly can lose traction and float a few feet before drifting to the other side and since no one knows how to drive in the rain this was happening everywhere last night. Also, it is not typical to drive with your headlights on in Cairo and windshield wipers are decorative only so most cars didn’t have the kind of visibility you want them to have so you can sprint across the street in your flip flops and reach the sidewalk alive. Weaving among the drifting cars and soaked Cairenes, my friend asked me when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer and I said I still don’t know that for sure, which is the wrong answer to give to someone who is so passionate about the law herself and someone, I forgot to mention, who is the WIFE OF MY BOSS, the lawyer who started the firm and hired me back in November.
Oh well, if she ever decides to rat me out for my wavering commitment, I can always spread the word to our coworkers that she called our boss something that sounded like “schnooky mouse” on the phone.
A good spy thriller? Check.
Comfy Brooklyn sweatshirt? Check (thanks Uncle Charlie!).
Cappuccino and a piece of chocolate cake DELIVERED TO MY DOOR? Check!
It is pretty much a perfect Friday afternoon. The maid (who lives downstairs) failed to show up for the third time last night (think we’re getting a new maid) so Marisol and I cleaned the apartment. Not really well, since we’ll eventually get a pro in here but well enough that I’m not cringing every time I put my foot down on something dusty or squishy or something that used to be a delivery menu I wanted to use but is now a pile of tiny pieces of paper covered in puppy saliva. Marisol swept (and I’m considering mopping tonight as well, I know, big plans!) while I de-slimed the stovetop and washed every dish and stick of silverware we own. So I can get into the kitchen now, though I haven’t gone grocery shopping this week there is really no need. Nothing to cook.
It might have to stay that way until tomorrow to. Today is the Prophet’s birthday so it is an official government and religious holiday weekend. Not many stores are open. I have errands to run besides the grocery shopping. My brother is coming to visit in a couple weeks and I need to pick up a mattress and a phone for him to use while he’s here. Also, I promised myself a bookshelf after payday as a reward for getting through the month.
There have been big shakeups at my office in the last few weeks so it has been a difficult month. I think I absorb more ambient stress than I realize because even though I don’t really know the people involved it was still really difficult to concentrate on my work. I went from reading an average of 220 letters a day to struggling to make 100. It is better now. One of our senior attorneys left the firm and left the LAW to follow a more spiritual path of studying reiki and teaching yoga. She did this after centering our entire correspondence review procedure around the way her mind needed it to work in order to process the information and draft our Statement of Claim, the central document we will submit explaining our client’s case. I’m glad she’s off to do something that will hopefully be really fulfilling and, after less than two months in a firm I can definitely understand how you could run yourself into the ground doing this for a lifetime, but since the whole system of information gathering was set up under the assumption that she was writing the SOC, she is kind of leaving us in the lurch.
We have rallied surprisingly well. She was only my supervisor for a week so I never experienced this but rumor has it she could be moody and, though a good teacher and friend when in a good mood, she could be unkind and somewhat maniacally ruthless in a bad mood. The tension in the office now that she is gone has palpably decreased. The other senior attorney working on the case has less management experience but he has definitely rallied. There was another scare last week when he had to leave for Canada for the whole week on emergency family leave but he is back and seems to be solidly picking up the slack where the other attorney left off. It is a little terrifying to feel so unprepared for what is coming when we finish the correspondence review in the next couple weeks, but also exciting because we will all get to do the kind of work we normally wouldn’t get to do until after we’d been at the firm for a year or so.
I am learning a lot more about how construction contracts work, which is a good thing, because it helps me do my job better and feel more invested in the work of the firm, but it is also a bad thing, since I honestly don’t really care how construction contracts work beyond the barest veneer of purely academic interest. In my soul, I am not a construction lawyer.
I am starting to wonder if in my soul I am a lawyer at all. I had an annoying conversation last night with a woman I work with that has picked open this old question in my brain that I thought had finally scarred over after I found happy employment and now it is festering again. She is incredibly smart and very intense about her work. Her brightest dream is to become an arbitrator of the highest degree and sit down with a cup of coffee to pour over two brilliantly written claims and determine who is right and what they are entitled to under the law. When she talks about the day she will get to do this, her eyes light up with actual joy at the thought of reading legal arguments. My eyes glaze over.
Anyway, she gave me a ride home last night during the biggest, longest thundering rainstorm I have seen since I’ve been in Cairo. Supposedly it actually HAILED out in Maadi, a neighborhood about 30 minutes away. People actually emailed the listserve about it in wonder. In my neighborhood it was just rain but since Cairo never gets rain there aren’t really any street gutters to speak of so the streets fill with deep puddles that run for ten, even fifteen yards and cover the entire width of the street. Cars that roll in too quickly or too slowly can lose traction and float a few feet before drifting to the other side and since no one knows how to drive in the rain this was happening everywhere last night. Also, it is not typical to drive with your headlights on in Cairo and windshield wipers are decorative only so most cars didn’t have the kind of visibility you want them to have so you can sprint across the street in your flip flops and reach the sidewalk alive. Weaving among the drifting cars and soaked Cairenes, my friend asked me when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer and I said I still don’t know that for sure, which is the wrong answer to give to someone who is so passionate about the law herself and someone, I forgot to mention, who is the WIFE OF MY BOSS, the lawyer who started the firm and hired me back in November.
Oh well, if she ever decides to rat me out for my wavering commitment, I can always spread the word to our coworkers that she called our boss something that sounded like “schnooky mouse” on the phone.
Friday, February 12, 2010
"Malesh" indeed
Crazy Landlady Saga Part Two:
As I jokingly predicted in my last post, I really did wind up spending most of the evening of January 30th sitting on an island of my belongings outside our former apartment holding my roommate’s dog while the landlady, her sister (who, it bears noting, we had never even met before this) and her “lawyer” (the patent licensing neighbor from downstairs) screamed their heads off at my roommate and her boyfriend (not at me because I was holding the cute puppy and wouldn’t have understood them anyway) and the police stood around looking like they might be getting migraines from the shock of it all.
They day before, we thought we had finally struck a deal, not a very good one for ourselves, but one that would allow us to leave with over half our deposit and the feeling that we’d stuck up for ourselves at least a little bit. The landlady had eventually offered half our deposit back, or 1750LE (around $350), when we owed her at most 700LE for a new mattress they’d bought for the girl who had my room before me that wasn’t written into the contract and for some air conditioning repairs. Her son called us separately and said he would fork over another 250LE from his own pocket just to smooth things over with us because he didn’t want the relationship to end badly. We didn’t care how the relationship ended, we just wanted it over and us out so we agreed to take the 2000LE and be out by the night of the 30th, giving them an extra day to show the apartment (because we had been refusing to let them in to show it while we were still there and while they were still insisting on keeping our full deposit). We didn’t trust them at all that this deal would stick, however, so we were clear that the movers were coming at 6pm on the 30th, (a Saturday, and therefore a week night since Sunday is the first day of the workweek here) to start packing up our stuff and so we needed the money before 6pm or the deal was off.
Sure enough, the landlady showed up at 5:15, practically threw the 2000LE at us and then crossed her arms and sat down on the couch in a huff and announced she was going to stay there until we moved out at 6. We explained that although the movers were coming at 6, it would take them a couple hours to pack up our stuff and since trucks aren’t allowed into my neighborhood until after 8, we wouldn’t actually be leaving the apartment for a few more hours yet. She huffed a little and when it seemed she really was going to sit there for three hours we couldn’t figure out what she wanted. At first we suggested she check the apartment to assure herself we were actually moving and that we weren’t stealing any of her hideous gold-painted furniture. She sniffed indignantly that she didn’t want to check the apartment, which didn’t surprise us since she’d kept so much of our money that even if we’d taken the walls with us when we left she could have had them rebuilt and still had cash (our cash!) to spare. So then we offered to give her our keys right then, since we already had our deposit (what we were getting of it), and then she could go home knowing that even if we reneged on the deal she could get into the apartment to get us out.
This was acceptable and we handed her our two keys (and didn’t mention the third we’d had made as an extra – we’re not stupid and we knew by then these people were not to be trusted). She was on her way out when she decided she DID want to check the apartment. We said of course, check away, then immediately called Marisol’s boyfriend, Maged, to come help us because we knew at that moment she was going to try to get more money.
The landlady started walking around jiggling loose drawers (all drawers are loose in Egypt), turning on light switches, and generally frowning and clucking and shaking her head in feigned dismay. Sure enough, she soon discovered the remote control for the air conditioning in my bedroom had stopped working sometime since the last time I used it in early October. There also wasn’t a remote for the AC in the living room, though the remote for the one in Marisol’s bedroom was the same brand and we’d always just used that one to set the temperature, then turned the AC on and off with the wall power switch. The landlady demanded another thousand pounds ($200) to replace the broken and missing air conditioner. Marisol told her we would walk down to Radio Shack ourselves and replace them and the landlady, a little disappointed we weren’t fighting with her on this, gave us one of our keys back and huffed back to her apartment.
Unfortunately, Radio Shack didn’t have any universal remotes that would work for air conditioners. They said we’d have to go to the tech mall downtown, which was at least a half hour drive in a taxi both ways. Since the Radio Shack manager said they would only cost 50LE maximum ($10) each, and the landlady already had so much of our money, we decided to go home and finish packing instead. The movers, three big, fairly uneducated but generally polite guys showed and started taping our stuff into boxes. I had carried my own things the two blocks to our new place earlier that day but Marisol’s stuff and all our kitchen things and three pieces of furniture were still in the apartment and needed to be packed, taped into boxes, carried down 16 flights of stairs (only some of it would fit in the elevator, not things like Marisol’s treadmill), packed into a truck that would come at 8, then driven to the new apartment and carried up another six flights of stairs and packed into the new living room. As they got to work, the landlady came back to see her new remote controls. We told her what Radio Shack had said, and that they would only cost 50LE and not 500LE each, as she’d estimated, but that we weren’t going to go downtown to get them and that she could check back with Radio Shack in a few days to see if they’d restocked.
The landlady promptly lost her shit. She started screaming at Marisol that she had given us our deposit back in good faith (she’d forgotten the half she was keeping for herself for no reason) and this was how we were treating her, etc. etc. Marisol was still packing and not really paying attention to this batshit screaming lady in her room but the shrill light fixture rupturing volume of it was upsetting the dog AND ME so I called Maged again only to find out he was still fifteen minutes away (normally when an Egyptian says “fifteen minutes” it means an hour but this time it turned out to be two hours because of traffic).
The movers were horrified. They picked up their pace significantly and, as a result of this stressful environment, they wound up packing an open carton of milk (milk comes in a box here and although some brands have a plastic flip top, the smaller boxes I use for coffee creamer are all cardboard and you make a little snip in the corner to pour) into the packing box with Marisol’s food from the fridge (yes, they even pack your vegetables!) and I spent a half hour at 1:30 in the morning rinsing milk off rotten eggplant and carrots because of course Marisol hadn’t cleaned the fridge before the guys had packed it so they packed everything, edible or not. When we told them the landlady already had 1500LE of our deposit and wanted more, they made the Egyptian equivalent of the finger spiraling “she’s crazy” loops beside their heads to say this was not normal behavior. They kept telling us not all Egyptians were like this and when Maged finally showed up, they told him how glad they were that we had someone to stick up for us in Arabic because we seemed like nice people.
They charged us about twice what moving should have cost but we couldn’t really blame them because they had to take a three hour break in the middle of their job when the landlady started physically blocking them from taking boxes out of our apartment. That’s about when she called her sister and the lawyer. Then everyone was there to scream at us and scream at the movers (who got everything into the hallway outside the apartment, but were too intimidated by the screaming to start taking it downstairs until the situation was resolved), and generally bring the moving process to a standstill. Maged still hadn’t arrived, Marisol had started to say some pretty rude things in response to the repeated screaming in her face, and the puppy was literally trembling in my arms.
My proudest moment, and really the only contribution I made at all, was when the landlady triumphantly told the lawyer that we had broken the air conditioning in the living room. He was holding the two remotes, the broken one for my room and the functional one from Marisol’s room. I noticed the power switch was on for the living room AC and I asked in Arabic “you said it’s broken?” And she said “well, I can’t turn it on so how do I know it isn’t broken?” And I gestured to the remote from Marisol’s room in the lawyer’s hand and mimed hitting Power. The lawyer, who typically alternated between yelling at us, demanding money, and telling his “client” not to swear and scream at Marisol in front of witnesses because swearing can be a criminal offense here aimed the remote at the air conditioner in front of me, Marisol, the landlady, her crazy sister, and all the movers (who all heard her claim it was broken) and voila the AC purred to life, all the buttons on the front lit up in green for Go to hell. The lawyer quickly turned the AC off and didn’t turn it on again the whole night.
Maged called around nine thirty to say he was almost there and that he had called the police and they were on their way and Marisol and I picked up our purses, the only things of ours left in the apartment and walked out the door without saying anything to each other or anyone. Inside the apartment, the argument could be made that we were trespassing (even though since it was still January, we were technically still legally tenants, having paid rent) but outside the apartment, and with not a sliver of our belongings inside, we were legally in the clear.
Shortly after the police arrived, I retired to the staircase with the puppy, who had by that time been in my arms for hours and was thoroughly traumatized. Not speaking Arabic, I had done all I could by showing my American passport and quietly asking the junior officer if I should call my embassy (of course he said no, but I spent a few minutes after that speaking earnestly to no one on the phone just to make him nervous). I called my friend and she and her roommate did us a huge favor by coming to pick up the dog and take her to the new apartment so she could have some peace, I could have the use of my arms again, and so we wouldn’t run the risk of her peeing on something and costing us another 1000LE.
The police did basically nothing for about four hours. They pinched the bridges of their noses, they rubbed their temples, they asked the lawyer to ask his client and her sister to stop screaming, they told Maged they wanted to hear our story directly from Marisol and I but they didn’t speak English well and we couldn’t get out more than a sentence or two before the lawyer would shout over us (and into our abused eardrums). Eventually we stopped trying and let the Egyptians yell at each other. The landlady kept demanding 1000LE to replace the air conditioner remotes, we kept repeating in hoarse whispers that she wasn’t asking for only 1000LE, but rather 1000LE MORE since she’d already kept 800LE from our deposit that she had no right to, and Maged kept speaking to the senior officer and the lawyer in a reasonable, if tense, tone, to try to work out a deal. The officer at one point offered 200LE from his own pocket to resolve the issue but the landlady said she wanted US to pay and that it wasn’t enough.
The most frustrating thing to me is that there wasn’t actually anything stopping us from leaving except that the movers wouldn’t take the stuff downstairs. They were legally allowed to. It was our stuff and we were outside the apartment. Our belongings weren’t in dispute. But the landlady would scream at the movers whenever they tried to move a box and the police declined to clarify to these poor confused guys that they had every right to take the stuff downstairs. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe us, but they were scared, and eventually went downstairs to smoke and hang out where there were fewer hysterical women.
If we could have filed a police report, we could have legally stayed in the apartment until the case went to court (usually around three months) without paying a cent in rent and we likely would have won because the landlady’s behavior was so out of proportion and because she’d already kept so much of our money. But to file a police report, we would have had to go to the police station. And to go to the police station, we would have had to leave our stuff in the hallway. The landlady had already made a move to grab one of our rolling suitcases and force it past Marisol back into the apartment just before the police arrived (because of the rule that if we had anything in the apartment we could be considered trespassing). This wasn’t just to boost her argument for when the police arrived. She still thought we didn’t have a key to the apartment anymore so by moving our bags inside, she thought she could locking them in and us out if worse came to worse. Marisol had to literally tear bag out of her hands. So we couldn’t leave our stuff to make a police report and the police would neither let us take them downstairs nor station an officer to watch them.
So our boxes stayed in the hallway and the fight ranged from around them to into the apartment and back again attracting the horrified and puzzled stares of our neighbors who kept telling us “malesh” which means, “I am sorry for you.” Because this was all very unusual and irrational behavior for Egyptians who generally appreciate the value of interpersonal relationship and will even sacrifice a good deal or something valuable to avoid grudges and part on good terms. This was why her son had offered the money from his own pocket to smooth things over with us. He and his sister showed up around 11:30 and had the same shocked and appalled faces as the neighbors and never said a word, just stood there like they were watching hyenas eat a baby.
Around 12:30am, I made a proposition to the police and to the lawyer. “I will give him 300LE,” I said, “not them,” gesturing to the screaming ladies, “him.” “Then tomorrow or the next day we will buy two air conditioning remotes. We’ll bring him the receipt proving they are only 50LE each and he will give me the change.” This was basically agreeable to all parties and although the lawyer wouldn’t sign anything to that effect, the senior police officer said that we had his word (and Maged said this was the equivalent of the officer promising to enforce the agreement on his honor) that the lawyer would abide by the terms of the deal, otherwise we could call him and he would come personally to sort it out. So I forked over the cash, and we called the movers back. While we waited for them, it was just us and the cops in the hallway for a little while with the door to our apartment closed and all the screaming stopped. The senior officer made the Egyptian symbol for “these people are absolutely batshit nuts” and told us not to think all Egyptians are like that. That one moment made me feel a little better about the whole experience, like this agreement from a person in authority somehow justified how attacked and outraged Marisol and I felt about the whole thing.
We were in our new apartment within the hour. By about 1:30am. And I had work in the morning.
Of course in the cold light of day we realized we’d rather use Ron Jeremy’s belly button as a cereal bowl for the rest of our lives than ever see any of those people ever again. So we just called the 300LE a loss (which means they wound up with $10 over half our original deposit) and never went to Radio Shack or called the lawyer back.
I have had two nightmares since that night in which the landlady tells the plumbers and carpenters in the neighborhood (both of which we need to do some maintenance and build some bookshelves in our new place) that we’re unscrupulous people and not to do business with us.
Our new landlord, Mr. Wagdi called a couple days ago on our landline. We use the landline only for the internet and have never given the number out and I swear when it rang we both had this irrational thought that somehow the old landlady had found us. We hesitated to answer but when Marisol picked up it was just the new landlord calling to make sure we were happy in the apartment, that we didn’t need anything, that we didn’t want someone to come and repaint (this thing about the repainting is an unheard of level of nice for an Egyptian landlord), and that he would call a handyman if we found any problems. He even asked her “how is your family in Mexico, praise God everyone is well.”
We feel very safe and happy here. Our oven and TV are huge and we have a microwave (only the fancy offices have microwaves in Egypt) and an espresso machine. Even the dog is calmer in this apartment…though she eats a lot of paint so I’m not sure her mood is an accurate yardstick of happiness.
In other news, I almost got run over by a cute guy in an SUV yesterday outside my office. He gunned his engine, then braked sharply when he saw me in the street to let me finish crossing. Closest thing I’ve had to a date since I’ve been in Cairo.
As I jokingly predicted in my last post, I really did wind up spending most of the evening of January 30th sitting on an island of my belongings outside our former apartment holding my roommate’s dog while the landlady, her sister (who, it bears noting, we had never even met before this) and her “lawyer” (the patent licensing neighbor from downstairs) screamed their heads off at my roommate and her boyfriend (not at me because I was holding the cute puppy and wouldn’t have understood them anyway) and the police stood around looking like they might be getting migraines from the shock of it all.
They day before, we thought we had finally struck a deal, not a very good one for ourselves, but one that would allow us to leave with over half our deposit and the feeling that we’d stuck up for ourselves at least a little bit. The landlady had eventually offered half our deposit back, or 1750LE (around $350), when we owed her at most 700LE for a new mattress they’d bought for the girl who had my room before me that wasn’t written into the contract and for some air conditioning repairs. Her son called us separately and said he would fork over another 250LE from his own pocket just to smooth things over with us because he didn’t want the relationship to end badly. We didn’t care how the relationship ended, we just wanted it over and us out so we agreed to take the 2000LE and be out by the night of the 30th, giving them an extra day to show the apartment (because we had been refusing to let them in to show it while we were still there and while they were still insisting on keeping our full deposit). We didn’t trust them at all that this deal would stick, however, so we were clear that the movers were coming at 6pm on the 30th, (a Saturday, and therefore a week night since Sunday is the first day of the workweek here) to start packing up our stuff and so we needed the money before 6pm or the deal was off.
Sure enough, the landlady showed up at 5:15, practically threw the 2000LE at us and then crossed her arms and sat down on the couch in a huff and announced she was going to stay there until we moved out at 6. We explained that although the movers were coming at 6, it would take them a couple hours to pack up our stuff and since trucks aren’t allowed into my neighborhood until after 8, we wouldn’t actually be leaving the apartment for a few more hours yet. She huffed a little and when it seemed she really was going to sit there for three hours we couldn’t figure out what she wanted. At first we suggested she check the apartment to assure herself we were actually moving and that we weren’t stealing any of her hideous gold-painted furniture. She sniffed indignantly that she didn’t want to check the apartment, which didn’t surprise us since she’d kept so much of our money that even if we’d taken the walls with us when we left she could have had them rebuilt and still had cash (our cash!) to spare. So then we offered to give her our keys right then, since we already had our deposit (what we were getting of it), and then she could go home knowing that even if we reneged on the deal she could get into the apartment to get us out.
This was acceptable and we handed her our two keys (and didn’t mention the third we’d had made as an extra – we’re not stupid and we knew by then these people were not to be trusted). She was on her way out when she decided she DID want to check the apartment. We said of course, check away, then immediately called Marisol’s boyfriend, Maged, to come help us because we knew at that moment she was going to try to get more money.
The landlady started walking around jiggling loose drawers (all drawers are loose in Egypt), turning on light switches, and generally frowning and clucking and shaking her head in feigned dismay. Sure enough, she soon discovered the remote control for the air conditioning in my bedroom had stopped working sometime since the last time I used it in early October. There also wasn’t a remote for the AC in the living room, though the remote for the one in Marisol’s bedroom was the same brand and we’d always just used that one to set the temperature, then turned the AC on and off with the wall power switch. The landlady demanded another thousand pounds ($200) to replace the broken and missing air conditioner. Marisol told her we would walk down to Radio Shack ourselves and replace them and the landlady, a little disappointed we weren’t fighting with her on this, gave us one of our keys back and huffed back to her apartment.
Unfortunately, Radio Shack didn’t have any universal remotes that would work for air conditioners. They said we’d have to go to the tech mall downtown, which was at least a half hour drive in a taxi both ways. Since the Radio Shack manager said they would only cost 50LE maximum ($10) each, and the landlady already had so much of our money, we decided to go home and finish packing instead. The movers, three big, fairly uneducated but generally polite guys showed and started taping our stuff into boxes. I had carried my own things the two blocks to our new place earlier that day but Marisol’s stuff and all our kitchen things and three pieces of furniture were still in the apartment and needed to be packed, taped into boxes, carried down 16 flights of stairs (only some of it would fit in the elevator, not things like Marisol’s treadmill), packed into a truck that would come at 8, then driven to the new apartment and carried up another six flights of stairs and packed into the new living room. As they got to work, the landlady came back to see her new remote controls. We told her what Radio Shack had said, and that they would only cost 50LE and not 500LE each, as she’d estimated, but that we weren’t going to go downtown to get them and that she could check back with Radio Shack in a few days to see if they’d restocked.
The landlady promptly lost her shit. She started screaming at Marisol that she had given us our deposit back in good faith (she’d forgotten the half she was keeping for herself for no reason) and this was how we were treating her, etc. etc. Marisol was still packing and not really paying attention to this batshit screaming lady in her room but the shrill light fixture rupturing volume of it was upsetting the dog AND ME so I called Maged again only to find out he was still fifteen minutes away (normally when an Egyptian says “fifteen minutes” it means an hour but this time it turned out to be two hours because of traffic).
The movers were horrified. They picked up their pace significantly and, as a result of this stressful environment, they wound up packing an open carton of milk (milk comes in a box here and although some brands have a plastic flip top, the smaller boxes I use for coffee creamer are all cardboard and you make a little snip in the corner to pour) into the packing box with Marisol’s food from the fridge (yes, they even pack your vegetables!) and I spent a half hour at 1:30 in the morning rinsing milk off rotten eggplant and carrots because of course Marisol hadn’t cleaned the fridge before the guys had packed it so they packed everything, edible or not. When we told them the landlady already had 1500LE of our deposit and wanted more, they made the Egyptian equivalent of the finger spiraling “she’s crazy” loops beside their heads to say this was not normal behavior. They kept telling us not all Egyptians were like this and when Maged finally showed up, they told him how glad they were that we had someone to stick up for us in Arabic because we seemed like nice people.
They charged us about twice what moving should have cost but we couldn’t really blame them because they had to take a three hour break in the middle of their job when the landlady started physically blocking them from taking boxes out of our apartment. That’s about when she called her sister and the lawyer. Then everyone was there to scream at us and scream at the movers (who got everything into the hallway outside the apartment, but were too intimidated by the screaming to start taking it downstairs until the situation was resolved), and generally bring the moving process to a standstill. Maged still hadn’t arrived, Marisol had started to say some pretty rude things in response to the repeated screaming in her face, and the puppy was literally trembling in my arms.
My proudest moment, and really the only contribution I made at all, was when the landlady triumphantly told the lawyer that we had broken the air conditioning in the living room. He was holding the two remotes, the broken one for my room and the functional one from Marisol’s room. I noticed the power switch was on for the living room AC and I asked in Arabic “you said it’s broken?” And she said “well, I can’t turn it on so how do I know it isn’t broken?” And I gestured to the remote from Marisol’s room in the lawyer’s hand and mimed hitting Power. The lawyer, who typically alternated between yelling at us, demanding money, and telling his “client” not to swear and scream at Marisol in front of witnesses because swearing can be a criminal offense here aimed the remote at the air conditioner in front of me, Marisol, the landlady, her crazy sister, and all the movers (who all heard her claim it was broken) and voila the AC purred to life, all the buttons on the front lit up in green for Go to hell. The lawyer quickly turned the AC off and didn’t turn it on again the whole night.
Maged called around nine thirty to say he was almost there and that he had called the police and they were on their way and Marisol and I picked up our purses, the only things of ours left in the apartment and walked out the door without saying anything to each other or anyone. Inside the apartment, the argument could be made that we were trespassing (even though since it was still January, we were technically still legally tenants, having paid rent) but outside the apartment, and with not a sliver of our belongings inside, we were legally in the clear.
Shortly after the police arrived, I retired to the staircase with the puppy, who had by that time been in my arms for hours and was thoroughly traumatized. Not speaking Arabic, I had done all I could by showing my American passport and quietly asking the junior officer if I should call my embassy (of course he said no, but I spent a few minutes after that speaking earnestly to no one on the phone just to make him nervous). I called my friend and she and her roommate did us a huge favor by coming to pick up the dog and take her to the new apartment so she could have some peace, I could have the use of my arms again, and so we wouldn’t run the risk of her peeing on something and costing us another 1000LE.
The police did basically nothing for about four hours. They pinched the bridges of their noses, they rubbed their temples, they asked the lawyer to ask his client and her sister to stop screaming, they told Maged they wanted to hear our story directly from Marisol and I but they didn’t speak English well and we couldn’t get out more than a sentence or two before the lawyer would shout over us (and into our abused eardrums). Eventually we stopped trying and let the Egyptians yell at each other. The landlady kept demanding 1000LE to replace the air conditioner remotes, we kept repeating in hoarse whispers that she wasn’t asking for only 1000LE, but rather 1000LE MORE since she’d already kept 800LE from our deposit that she had no right to, and Maged kept speaking to the senior officer and the lawyer in a reasonable, if tense, tone, to try to work out a deal. The officer at one point offered 200LE from his own pocket to resolve the issue but the landlady said she wanted US to pay and that it wasn’t enough.
The most frustrating thing to me is that there wasn’t actually anything stopping us from leaving except that the movers wouldn’t take the stuff downstairs. They were legally allowed to. It was our stuff and we were outside the apartment. Our belongings weren’t in dispute. But the landlady would scream at the movers whenever they tried to move a box and the police declined to clarify to these poor confused guys that they had every right to take the stuff downstairs. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe us, but they were scared, and eventually went downstairs to smoke and hang out where there were fewer hysterical women.
If we could have filed a police report, we could have legally stayed in the apartment until the case went to court (usually around three months) without paying a cent in rent and we likely would have won because the landlady’s behavior was so out of proportion and because she’d already kept so much of our money. But to file a police report, we would have had to go to the police station. And to go to the police station, we would have had to leave our stuff in the hallway. The landlady had already made a move to grab one of our rolling suitcases and force it past Marisol back into the apartment just before the police arrived (because of the rule that if we had anything in the apartment we could be considered trespassing). This wasn’t just to boost her argument for when the police arrived. She still thought we didn’t have a key to the apartment anymore so by moving our bags inside, she thought she could locking them in and us out if worse came to worse. Marisol had to literally tear bag out of her hands. So we couldn’t leave our stuff to make a police report and the police would neither let us take them downstairs nor station an officer to watch them.
So our boxes stayed in the hallway and the fight ranged from around them to into the apartment and back again attracting the horrified and puzzled stares of our neighbors who kept telling us “malesh” which means, “I am sorry for you.” Because this was all very unusual and irrational behavior for Egyptians who generally appreciate the value of interpersonal relationship and will even sacrifice a good deal or something valuable to avoid grudges and part on good terms. This was why her son had offered the money from his own pocket to smooth things over with us. He and his sister showed up around 11:30 and had the same shocked and appalled faces as the neighbors and never said a word, just stood there like they were watching hyenas eat a baby.
Around 12:30am, I made a proposition to the police and to the lawyer. “I will give him 300LE,” I said, “not them,” gesturing to the screaming ladies, “him.” “Then tomorrow or the next day we will buy two air conditioning remotes. We’ll bring him the receipt proving they are only 50LE each and he will give me the change.” This was basically agreeable to all parties and although the lawyer wouldn’t sign anything to that effect, the senior police officer said that we had his word (and Maged said this was the equivalent of the officer promising to enforce the agreement on his honor) that the lawyer would abide by the terms of the deal, otherwise we could call him and he would come personally to sort it out. So I forked over the cash, and we called the movers back. While we waited for them, it was just us and the cops in the hallway for a little while with the door to our apartment closed and all the screaming stopped. The senior officer made the Egyptian symbol for “these people are absolutely batshit nuts” and told us not to think all Egyptians are like that. That one moment made me feel a little better about the whole experience, like this agreement from a person in authority somehow justified how attacked and outraged Marisol and I felt about the whole thing.
We were in our new apartment within the hour. By about 1:30am. And I had work in the morning.
Of course in the cold light of day we realized we’d rather use Ron Jeremy’s belly button as a cereal bowl for the rest of our lives than ever see any of those people ever again. So we just called the 300LE a loss (which means they wound up with $10 over half our original deposit) and never went to Radio Shack or called the lawyer back.
I have had two nightmares since that night in which the landlady tells the plumbers and carpenters in the neighborhood (both of which we need to do some maintenance and build some bookshelves in our new place) that we’re unscrupulous people and not to do business with us.
Our new landlord, Mr. Wagdi called a couple days ago on our landline. We use the landline only for the internet and have never given the number out and I swear when it rang we both had this irrational thought that somehow the old landlady had found us. We hesitated to answer but when Marisol picked up it was just the new landlord calling to make sure we were happy in the apartment, that we didn’t need anything, that we didn’t want someone to come and repaint (this thing about the repainting is an unheard of level of nice for an Egyptian landlord), and that he would call a handyman if we found any problems. He even asked her “how is your family in Mexico, praise God everyone is well.”
We feel very safe and happy here. Our oven and TV are huge and we have a microwave (only the fancy offices have microwaves in Egypt) and an espresso machine. Even the dog is calmer in this apartment…though she eats a lot of paint so I’m not sure her mood is an accurate yardstick of happiness.
In other news, I almost got run over by a cute guy in an SUV yesterday outside my office. He gunned his engine, then braked sharply when he saw me in the street to let me finish crossing. Closest thing I’ve had to a date since I’ve been in Cairo.
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Standoff
Today is a public holiday. A random Monday. Which wouldn’t be weird in the States because if Monday is off it means a three day weekend. But here, where our workweek is Sunday through Thursday, having Monday off is like having an odd little mid-week island, a hiccup where I can almost catch my breath but then have to stutterstep my way back into work on Tuesday. Not that I’m complaining, so far the day has been awesome. I woke up at nine, went back to sleep, woke up at noon, and then walked past a Harley Davidson motorcycle gang of four on a tiny residential street to the Internet café where it is absolutely BLARING Enya. Like I honestly cannot hear my own music through my headphones because Sail Away is making the walls shake. Why am I being so diligent in updating the blog on my middle-of-the-week day off? Because I have plenty to report.
Basically, my landlady is trying to steal my deposit. She picked the wrong two girls to try to screw over because we’re both committed to Egypt for at least another couple years so it isn’t as if she can play the whole “Haha, you already have your ticket to go back home in a couple days and you don’t have time to fight this out” card. We really do have time to fight it out. It isn’t like this is a few hundred pounds, our deposit is one month’s rent, or $700 so it isn’t an amount either of us is willing to walk away from. She claims that when Marisol removed her gaudy chandeliers from every light fixture in the apartment (yes, even kitchen and bathroom), some of them were broken in storage. First, this isn’t our problem, she’s the one who stored them improperly, secondly, at most a broken chandelier would cost MAYBE $5 to fix. So there’s no justification for keeping our whole deposit.
We offered to pay for some air conditioner repairs, which the girl who was living in my room before me broke and then didn’t pay them for and also for a mattress which she’d asked them to buy her but neglected to put in the contract. These things we agreed could reasonably be seen as our responsibility. Then, for goodwill and good bargaining, we added about 300 pounds ($60) to make our absolute best offer 1000 pounds or $200 that we would accept being taken out of our deposit. We expect the rest back and since she’s refusing we are essentially planning to squat in our apartment through February or until she breaks. We will refuse to pay rent on the ground that she already has one month’s rent of ours and that we fairly gave our one month’s notice and therefore have one month remaining in the apartment.
Her real problem is that she bought a new refrigerator for the apartment back in December and I think she regrets it even though we paid for a full HALF of a fridge we will have gotten to use for like two months. Every time she starts to list the things she thinks we owe her money for, she mentions the fridge and then is like, oh, no, slip of the tongue. So we know it is on her mind and that because of it, she is not able to bargain in a rational Egyptian way (this info comes from Maged, Marisol’s boyfriend who has been doing the bargaining on our behalf).
Maged is pretty pissed at how we are being treated. The landlady almost caused a big problem when she said, “Listen, I have a lawyer and if you want to talk to him, you can talk to him,” and Maged was like “Fine, I have a layer, I will get Marisol a lawyer, Margaret IS a lawyer and works with a bunch of lawyers, you go get your lawyer (who we are sure is just this neighbor guy on the floor below us who does patent law) and we’ll all sit down and have a big conversation and get charged by the hour.” And she shut right up.
OH MY GOD THEY ARE PLAYING SAIL AWAY AGAIN. THIS IS THE THIRD TIME SINCE I’VE SAT DOWN.
AND, AS I’VE LISTENED, THEY JUST STARTED IT OVER AGAIN.
This is out of control. I will post an update on the apartment situation in a week or so, assuming I am not living out on the curb with my roommate and our puppy on an mountain of our belongings, but I have got to get out of this All Enya All the Time Zone I’ve stumbled into.
Basically, my landlady is trying to steal my deposit. She picked the wrong two girls to try to screw over because we’re both committed to Egypt for at least another couple years so it isn’t as if she can play the whole “Haha, you already have your ticket to go back home in a couple days and you don’t have time to fight this out” card. We really do have time to fight it out. It isn’t like this is a few hundred pounds, our deposit is one month’s rent, or $700 so it isn’t an amount either of us is willing to walk away from. She claims that when Marisol removed her gaudy chandeliers from every light fixture in the apartment (yes, even kitchen and bathroom), some of them were broken in storage. First, this isn’t our problem, she’s the one who stored them improperly, secondly, at most a broken chandelier would cost MAYBE $5 to fix. So there’s no justification for keeping our whole deposit.
We offered to pay for some air conditioner repairs, which the girl who was living in my room before me broke and then didn’t pay them for and also for a mattress which she’d asked them to buy her but neglected to put in the contract. These things we agreed could reasonably be seen as our responsibility. Then, for goodwill and good bargaining, we added about 300 pounds ($60) to make our absolute best offer 1000 pounds or $200 that we would accept being taken out of our deposit. We expect the rest back and since she’s refusing we are essentially planning to squat in our apartment through February or until she breaks. We will refuse to pay rent on the ground that she already has one month’s rent of ours and that we fairly gave our one month’s notice and therefore have one month remaining in the apartment.
Her real problem is that she bought a new refrigerator for the apartment back in December and I think she regrets it even though we paid for a full HALF of a fridge we will have gotten to use for like two months. Every time she starts to list the things she thinks we owe her money for, she mentions the fridge and then is like, oh, no, slip of the tongue. So we know it is on her mind and that because of it, she is not able to bargain in a rational Egyptian way (this info comes from Maged, Marisol’s boyfriend who has been doing the bargaining on our behalf).
Maged is pretty pissed at how we are being treated. The landlady almost caused a big problem when she said, “Listen, I have a lawyer and if you want to talk to him, you can talk to him,” and Maged was like “Fine, I have a layer, I will get Marisol a lawyer, Margaret IS a lawyer and works with a bunch of lawyers, you go get your lawyer (who we are sure is just this neighbor guy on the floor below us who does patent law) and we’ll all sit down and have a big conversation and get charged by the hour.” And she shut right up.
OH MY GOD THEY ARE PLAYING SAIL AWAY AGAIN. THIS IS THE THIRD TIME SINCE I’VE SAT DOWN.
AND, AS I’VE LISTENED, THEY JUST STARTED IT OVER AGAIN.
This is out of control. I will post an update on the apartment situation in a week or so, assuming I am not living out on the curb with my roommate and our puppy on an mountain of our belongings, but I have got to get out of this All Enya All the Time Zone I’ve stumbled into.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Margaret, ESQ week one
Thanks everyone, for being so patient with my total lack of communication this week. After ten days without internet while we were traveling around Upper Egypt, I was already super behind on reading my messages when I started my new job. And, surprise, surprise, the law firm isn’t like the non-profit office where I can check Gmail and Facebook a million times during the day.
The week started early Sunday morning, which is the first day of the workweek in Egypt. It started too early, as it turned out, since I had foolishly never asked what time to show up for work and had to go in around 8:00 just to be sure no one was sitting around waiting for me. Which they weren’t. Nobody else got in until a little after nine, by which time I’d settled comfortably into the waiting room with my Jeffrey Deaver thriller.
Turns out my firm has almost has many IT guys as lawyers and way more than we have secretaries or assistants. We use so many Lexis Nexis programs in so many new and exciting ways (that most of us don’t understand) that they’ve actually asked us to do Beta testing on new software before but we turn them down because we can’t afford the catastrophe of software stopping working, even for a day.
Speaking of days, I have come to understand the concept differently this week. A day is no longer the amount of light outside or the 8 hours in between my punch in at 9 and my punch out at 5. A day is now as long as it needs to be for me to bill 7-8 hours of work on a client’s case (which is usually 9-10 hours). There is a little clock on my computer that I click on to start the seconds and minutes ticking away until I can go home. Whenever I want to go to the bathroom or get up for coffee (I’ll get to THAT in a minute) or chat with someone, I have to stop the clock, and restart it when I sit back down to work again. Also when I stop to ask questions, which I seem to need to do every forty-five seconds. Everyone in my office has been really nice and welcoming and they seem like laid-back, funny, intelligent people, but it is very stressful to try to get to know anyone when I have to stop my clock to have a conversation and can’t start counting down to the end of my “day” until the conversation is over. There is no such thing as small talk anymore.
Nescafe and tea are available in the office for free but we have to pay for coffee, which annoys me because I think coffee (and Nescafe is NOT coffee) is the fuel that keeps workers working efficiently and it is in the best interests of any company to keep its staff fully fueled, but I kind of understand it because drip coffee is much more expensive here. Milk, juice, fruit, yogurt and sodas are all kept stocked in the fridge and if we take one, or a coffee or espresso or glass of milk for our cereal, we color in the appropriate dot by our name on a sheet in the kitchen and the cost, from one to five pounds depending on the item, is deducted from our salary.
Lunch is also deducted from our salary. We can call anywhere we want to have food delivered to the office and the secretaries take care of the check and then deduct the total from our lunches from our salary at the end of the month. If I were more responsible, I could ask each day for my receipt so I know how much I spend on lunch each day but I think it is better not to know. Instead, I usually order from a delicious Egyptian place that is so cheap I usually have to order enough food for three meals just to make their 12 pound minimum charge (about $2.50). For that amount I can get a shish taouk sandwhich (chicken or steak grilled with peppers and onions on a stick and then unsticked into French bread), a thick, spicy lentil soup with crispy pita croutons, and a quarter of a grilled chicken over rice.
My office is colder than it is outside because we are on a shady side street across from a bank and a cheap tourist hotel (where we can see directly into the rooms…shout out to the guy in the towel with tattoos on his shoulder blades!) so we get natural light but no direct sun. This will be nice in the summer but I have to wear my coat all day now because the woman I share an office with, the wife of the principal partner of the firm, hates to have the heater on. Not that I could turn it on anyway. Pictured above is the remote control for the heater/air conditioner, which looks like it was designed by a six year old. There are THREE kinds of smiley faces and FIVE kinds of checkmarks on the buttons. Did I miss a class somewhere on the three types of smiley faces universally recognized to control hot and cold? On my second day, my officemate took pity on me in my coat and showed me how to work it.
I am part of the construction team in the firm, which, as I understand from carefully timed office chit chat makes most of the money for the firm, but is not the most interesting work. We also represent Egypt in arbitrations, which falls into the much more interesting and cutting edge realm of public international law. The new hires on that side of the office do research on public international law issues, which sounds awesome, whereas I look at correspondence a bunch of contractors sent to each other over the years it took to build a really big building. There are thirty or so issues I look for, like “Procurement” and “Payment” and when I find something relevant to our case, I mark it with one of the issue categories so it can be referenced later by a more senior attorney (that’s right, folks, I said ‘more senior ATTORNEY,’ I’m a freaking ATTORNEY now booyah…ahem…sorry…moving on).
There are nearly a hundred thousand correspondence documents in the case and the construction team needs to look at all of them so we’re expected to average 150-200 a day. I did about 900 this week and have thankfully moved on from the really technical correspondence about things I don’t understand like ductwork and grout and dampers to the really exciting memos about stuff like bonds and insurance policies and inter-trade coordination. What could be next?! I’ll keep you posted.
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