Jenyfer Matthews

A friend send me the following article from the Los Angeles Times and I had to share it with you. I only have one small quibble: not *all* the expats here are rich (though I do know plenty of those too). We certainly don’t have an SUV – or any car all in fact (too expensive!). My family is only “rich” by comparison to many regular Egyptians – but there are also plenty of Egyptians who make us look like paupers! In the US we’d be middle class at best.

The rest of this article is a wonderful slice of a day in my life.

Walking the beat in a Cairo neighborhood

In Maadi, young police officers keep watch over streets filled with scurrying schoolgirls, bellowing junk dealers, hustling gardeners and well-off expats as the ancient rhythm of the city plays on.

By Jeffrey Fleishman
March 16, 2009

Reporting from Cairo — Faces peek out through the wire mesh in the green trucks that rumble through the morning. They are not prisoners, but they seem so. A back door opens and they drop out one by one in their black uniforms, scuffed shoes and clumsily tilted berets.

Their rifles clatter, they are on the beat. They yawn and stretch and meander through the neighborhood, a trickling dark sea beneath the jacaranda and magnolia. They watch the Western girls, unveiled and unattainable, scurry to schools and cafes past bicycle delivery boys and men calling for “junk, junk” outside embassies and the homes of the rich.

They are young, these policemen, carrying bread and beans in plastic bags, taking positions on corners, along train tracks, in front of the villas of diplomats; they wait for trouble or lunch.. No one here seems particularly worried, not even after the recent bombing in the Cairo bazaar that killed a French schoolgirl or the stabbing of an American teacher a few days later.

This is Maadi, a southern neighborhood just off the Nile, a place of draped vines and shaggy willows where gardeners hustle hoses across narrow streets and black-and-white taxis troll for fares, rattling and held together by spare parts and ingenuity, their drivers sometimes pulling into the shade to slumber. There are no meters, the taxi man sets a price, the passenger counters, heads shake, an agreement is reached.

Walkie-talkies squawk like birds. There are the police you see — the young men in their uniforms and smiles — and those you aren’t supposed to notice, the undercover guys with bumps beneath their jackets, who whisper into car windows and call aside laborers in tunics. It seems conspiratorial, a sprawling secret conversation at the edge of the lives of expats, who appear oblivious, zipping around
in SUVs, playing baseball and backgammon, hurrying off to swimming classes and yoga meditation.

The eyes watch. Sometimes the eyes sleep; snoozing policemen in the 2 p.m. heat. Egypt is a police state. It runs on bribes, informers and the hauling away of suspicious men. It knows terrorism and has spawned its share of Islamic radicals: Ayman Zawahiri, a surgeon turned Al Qaeda lieutenant whose screeds are posted on the Internet, grew up in Maadi in a family of scholars and doctors.

The blast in the bazaar turned the mood a bit edgier, and suddenly roadblocks appeared where they hadn’t been and streets that had been dark at night were brightly lighted. A poor country struggling through the global financial crisis and relying on foreign workers and tourists can’t afford explosions and staccato images of bloodshed on the evening news.

Maadi stayed calm, perhaps with an underlying buzz of anxiety, but nothing to change routines, except the intemperate winter weather, which turned from cold to dust storms to sun. An ancient rhythm. The policemen roamed. They checked their bullets. They filled out time charts, thumbed the Koran; the lower ranks fetched more beans and bread, joking with the drivers who waited for women carrying bags of fish and meat and packages of cookies that each cost more than what a policeman earns in two days.

The mosques filled and emptied. The sun made ghost shadows of laundry against the buildings. The maids went home; the nannies were dispatched. The school day was done.

Teenage girls with Western money walked past a policeman with a worn Kalashnikov and loose buttons dangling from his uniform. He was not much older than they were. They see each other every day, but know nothing of each other. They share only a space. He protects them until the green truck arrives and fresh policemen drop to the pavement as he climbs aboard and the back door closes for the long ride home, over the bridge and far away from the jacaranda and magnolia.

I admit it – I totally forgot to turn out my lights on Saturday night in support of Earth Hour. In my defense, I don’t watch much TV news so I had nothing to remind me of the event at the pertinent moment

However, in my defense I do turn off my computers every night (have you got any idea of how much leaving them on costs in terms of $$ and wasted energy??) and last night we turned off our lights at 9:30pm and left them off all night long

If everyone did that, we’d not only save a lot of electricity but be in better moods and have more stamina. At least I would be. There’s nothing quite like a good night’s sleep.

Leslie Langtry is, in fact, a mom and a Girl Scout leader, but she has never assassinated anyone, either professionally or for recreation. Okay, she knits, but she almost never garrotes anyone with the circular needles.

Instead, she lives with her husband, Tom, and two children, Margaret and Jack, in the Quad Cities – with no immediate plans to train either child as an assassin. She wants to make that perfectly clear.

Leslie shares blog space with four other amazing Dorchester writers at Killer Fiction. I Shot You Babe is scheduled for release July 1, 2009.

When Fractions Happen to Good People

The other night, my ten year old daughter asked me to help with her math homework. I laughed because, just how hard can 5th grade math be? I mean, I went through 5th grade and did okay. So we sat down to work. I kind of pictured it as a sort of Norman Rockwell painting…”Loving and Intelligent Mom Helps Child.” That sort of thing.

The first few problems were easy. No problem I thought. Of course I know what 1/5 of 100 is! I’m so smart it’s scary! The next two problems followed suit. I was really impressing my kid with my mad math skills. Little did I know that this is how they lure you in and then reduce you to monosyllabic rants.

What is 1/2 of 5/7? I rubbed my eyes. Surely this was a trick question. The answer was probably “mauve.” I read and re-read the question while my daughter looked at me expectantly.

“Um, er, what do YOU think the answer is?” That’s it! Deflect with psychology! She’d know the answer and I’d nod wisely, indicating that I knew it all along.

Margaret shook her head. “No clue. I was sick they day they studied this. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

Damn.

I have broken out in a cold sweat before. There was a job interview where they asked something and I promptly forgot the question before giving the answer – which, it turned out, I didn’t know. There was a pop quiz in Kievan Russia 1490-1628 when I hadn’t attended the class in a month. There was even the time I lied to my husband about how much that pair of shoes really cost just before he produced the receipt ala Perry Mason. This was like that.

Me: “Oh. Well, what is half of 5/7?”
Margaret: “That’s what I’m asking you.”
Me: “I think you should have to figure it out.”
Margaret: “Okay, but you have to help me.”
Me: Banging the book on the table and hoping for a distraction of epic proportions that, by the way, never comes. “What does it say in the chapter?”
Margaret: “It isn’t in there. I looked already.”
Me: After letting out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding in, “It’s a secret.”
Margaret: “You don’t have any idea, do you?”
Me: “Sure I do! I have a masters degree! I’m over 40!”
Margaret: Shaking head slowly. “You are so sad.”
Me: Pulling out my cell phone. “Yes I am. Let’s text Daddy.”

My husband came home later that night after the kids were in bed. He found me sitting in the kitchen, swearing at my daughter’s math book with an empty wineglass and, um, an empty bottle of wine.

He didn’t know the answer either.

Don’t let math happen to you.

I just had the following email from my children’s school and it sounds like a fine idea to me:

Earth Hour is this Saturday March 28 from 8:30-9:30pm. People all over the world are asked to turn off their lights for one hour as a way of “voting” for Earth and against Global Warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, races and backgrounds have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. The world is being urged to VOTE EARTH.

Egypt has joined Earth Hour’s global call for action on climate change. The lights will go out on the Sphinx and Great Pyramids of Giza , the Cairo Tower, and Bibliotheca in Alexandria for Earth Hour from 8:30-9:30pm on Saturday March 28.

We want to reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is a chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco , Rome ’s Coliseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community, a call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 83 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.
YOUR LIGHT SWITCH IS YOUR VOTE

Please VOTE FOR EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour.

Wherever you are in the world, please turn off your lights on Saturday, March 28, from 8:30 to 9:30pm your time.

For more information go to www.earthhour.org

I’m going to do it, what about you?

Dare I admit that I have never read a Lisa Kleypas book? I’ve heard her name here and there on various blogs but never quite got around to looking her up, until recently. Dear Author and Smart Bitches have both recently run reviews of her latest release, Smooth Talking Stranger, so I thought, right – it’s time to give her a try.

Unfortunately, the bookstores in Cairo aren’t all I could wish for and her book isn’t available on ebookwise.com (yet) Instead, I had to make due buying four of her historicals instead. Though I’m bummed I’ll have to wait on this one a while – I love love love a good contemporary – I am very much looking forward to reading the others. I have only recently discovered how much I love historicals too.

Anyway, for those of you who *do* have good bookstores available to you, here is the book blurb. I’ll live vicariously through you…

Ella Varner has it all–a successful career as an advice columnist, a handsome boyfriend, and a circle of friends in Austin. When anyone has a problem, Ella knows the answers.

But one night she receives a call that changes everything. And as Ella’s world is turned upside-down, she meets a man who is the opposite of everything she ever wanted . . . a man who will offer her the most irresistible challenge she has ever known . . .

Read an excerpt.

Have a contemporary that you love and want to recommend to others? Visit the Save the Contemporary site and tell them all about it.

Every now and again I make an effort to escape the rut of my routine and do something new and different. I had the opportunity this weekend so I seized it with both hands and went on a half-day tour of the Bulaq district of Cairo.

The only thing I knew of the Bulaq is that there is a very large fabric souq located there. (What do you expect? I’m a quilter!) There’s much more to it than that – apparently it was once the center of town and a big port, way back when the Nile was actually still running nearby.

(as usual, click any image to enlarge)

One of our first stops was the Sinan Pasha Mosque, a somewhat rare example of an Ottoman style mosque in Cairo – though it did have some Mamluk touches here and there. I’m no architectural expert so I took the tour guide’s word for it. While it was quite plain and unassuming on the outside, it certainly was lovely inside. I can only imagine how lovely in its day, when all the adornments were fresh (and still in place).











The mosque attendants were not at all sure about letting us in to visit. The man on the right was particularly crabby about us being there!


Next, we walked down the street to a hamman, or public bath house, that was built by the same man as the mosque. It’s in the process of being restored, though there are apparently no plans to open it for use.

It has quite an unassuming entrance!

It’s a shame it won’t ever open for business. Can’t you just imagine relaxing in a sauna in here?

I love taking pictures of street scenes, of normal people going about their business. I’m sure that they look at us taking pictures of them or of houses or shops or horses and just shake their heads. Once, when I was still living in the United Arab Emirates, I had a man stop me while I was taking a picture down an alley of a line of laundry hung out to dry and ask me, “Why do you want a picture of that?” To him it was ugly, to me it was fascinating.





We passed along the back of the fabric souq as we walked from site to site. This shop was as close as we got, but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind!





Work horse, taking a break.

This man was in attendance at the last mosque we visited and he wasn’t nearly so crabby about our visit. Perhaps the first guy just needed a shisha pipe and a cup of tea to mellow him out!

Dara England is the pen name of Carol Green, an author of fantasy, paranormal romance, historical fiction, and contemporary fairytales. When she isn’t glued to her computer screen, Dara can be found attending renaissance fairs, going to operas and ballets, or hanging out at her local library and bookstores. Visit her on the web

Brought to Life
Blurb:

Megan Hurst’s life has taken some unexpected turns: First she loses her heart to the dashing hero of a novel. And then she meets an amnesia victim who seems just like him.

The mysterious stranger needs her help to piece his past together, and the closer the two become, the more questions arise about his resemblance to a “fictional” character.

Megan’s romantic feelings and her bizarre suspicions bring her to an impossible question… Has she dreamed the Duke to life?

Excerpt:

None of the onlookers were making a move to help. Megan shoved her way through the crowd to reach the still figure sprawled across the pavement. Kneeling at his side, she noted in a glance that he still breathed. There was little blood except for a thin stream trickling from his face, which
was turned down toward the pavement.

“Someone call an ambulance,” Megan shouted at the staring crowd. “He needs to get to a hospital.”

“I tell you it was like he just appeared,” repeated the driver, coming to stand over her. Megan ignored him.

In the background someone was speaking into a cell phone, presumably to an emergency operator. “The intersection of Fairmont and Main,” the woman was saying. “A man’s been hit by a car. I think he’s dead.”

He wasn’t dead. Already he was stirring and making slight moaning sounds. Megan didn’t dare move him for fear of injuring him worse. Instead she twisted around and lay so that her face rested on the pavement, level with his. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “Don’t try to move. Help is on the way.”

Catching her first glimpse into the face of the injured man she cut off mid-sentence. There was something incredibly familiar about him. Those impossibly gorgeous eyes, the sharp cleft in his chin, and his hair. She’d once read someplace where someone’s hair was described as the shade of
sun-ripened wheat. For some reason that seemed to suit this man.

His emerald colored eyes were wide open. Even in his apparent pain she could read no fear in them. Instead his gaze was fixed steadily, confidently, on her. The expectancy in that look sent an odd feeling through Megan. For a moment she had the weird sense that he somehow knew and trusted her better than she knew or trusted herself.

She cleared her throat of a sudden dryness. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said for want of a better reassurance.

He mumbled something back, but it was hard to make out. It might have been, “I know.” Then his eyes closed and he went limp.

Buy This Book!

The kids have yet another holiday today – this time for Taba Liberation Day. That makes three days this month already and it’s only half done! Sometimes I don’t know how parents who both work manage. Oh wait – yes I do. They have nannies.

I don’t have a nanny and am working at the library today so my son will be having a boys day with his father, who also has the day off (daughter isn’t home from her trip yet) The school my children attend doesn’t share the schedule of the school where I’m working which can sometimes be a pain in the butt. Though the children there have the day off as well – this is a library maintenance catch-up day.

Fun stuff.

My daughter will arrive back later today. It’s been very quiet around here without her.

Is it worse for a stranger to tell you that your fly is down or someone you know? If you know the informant, does it matter what their relationship is? Family, close friend, acquaintance, co-worker? Is it better or worse if a stranger tells you?

Whether I tell someone or not often depends on the circumstances and my relationship to the person (I’ll almost always tell if I like the person), but the less well I know someone the more awkward I feel about revealing that I’ve noticed…

My eight year old daughter leaves on a class trip to Alexandria, Egypt today – a three day, two night jaunt that will have her staying in a five star hotel, cut off from all contact from me for the duration of her trip. (No phone calls allowed and all stalking parents will be severely dealt with by the head teacher.)

I wasn’t so worried about the trip when it was first announced. Truth be told, I thought it was a great idea

But my mothering instincts have kicked in and I admit to being a little concerned about it now. What if she doesn’t like the food? What if she gets homesick? She’s afraid of the dark – what if her roommate doesn’t want to leave the bathroom light on??

Last year she asked if we could move before the trip so that she wouldn’t be required to go. She’s since changed her tune and started packing several days in advance.

As excited as I am for her to have this opportunity – we were lucky to have day trips to the zoo when I was her age! – I’m kind of sad to have to start preparing her for separation and independence at such a young age.

I suppose I better get used to it – she’s only going to keep getting older after all. As much as she protests that she’ll never move out now, I know that day will come. But before that, there will be many such little agonies. Next year the class trip is a week in Cyprus.

I wonder if we can move before that?