Updates and extensions
December 18, 2005
Here�s what happened since the last entry:
Re: The pharmacy woman�s brother �
After much thought and going back and forth on the matter, I told my mom that I wasn�t interested in meeting the guy. On Wednesday I told my mom, what the hell, let�s try it, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I started freaking out. I am shy when it comes to certain social situations, and I just don�t think I could get over the awkwardness of such a set up. Also, I knew that on my end I would just be going through with the meeting to fulfill some sort of social experiment, which I didn�t think was fair to the guy. So a few hours after telling my mom to go ahead with it, I reneged on the whole thing and told her that if they were interested in having me do that salon meeting sort of thing, they�d have to trick me into doing it. The next day at work, I realized that maybe my wily mother would take that as a go-ahead to trick me into a meeting with pharmacy woman�s brother, so I opened the topic again with my mother that night after work, and it turns out I was right. It seems that soon after I told her to �trick� me into doing the salon-meeting next time, my mom called up pharmacy woman and told her that I wasn�t interested in doing the salon meeting, and that also I wasn�t the type of girl who would go for a religiously conservative guy, so if her brother was into those things it wouldn�t work out anyway. Pharmacy girl said that her brother (Walid) was also dead against salon-type meetings, and that he had gone off on her when he heard about what she�d done. She also told my mom that Walid is not conservative at all, and would eventually like to leave Egypt and live abroad, probably in England. My mom got all excited because she knows that these are all things which are considered good in my book. I was kind of annoyed with my mom for going against my wishes, or sort of manipulating what I�d told her, but that soon passed. I don�t know what�s happened since. I haven�t opened the subject again with my mom.
Re: Mabrouka
The day after I posted last, Mabrouka told my mom that she preferred to stay with the friend who brought her to Cairo, and that she would just commute every day to come work for us. It�s about a half hour commute each way, as her friend lives in Nasr City, but my mom said they could try it out and she what happens. The very next morning, Mabrouka came to the house and told my mom that she just didn�t think the arrangement would work, and that she planned to go back to her village, so Mabrouka is no longer in our employ. My mom is still really worried about her though, and called up Mabrouka�s friend to see if, at least, there was some way she could convince Mabrouka to seek help from a professional, and offered to pay for any treatment. Her friend told my mom that all sorts of horrible things have happened to Mabrouka throughout her life, and that at some point she was, in fact, seeing a shrink, but there is a whole culture of shame surrounding that sort of thing here in Egypt, especially when you come from a small village, and I guess whatever treatment she did receive just wasn�t very helpful because her family wasn�t very understanding of her situation.
So, anyway, Mabrouka is gone. The ghosts she left behind are apparently still lurking in our house though, or at least in our minds.
Though I may have sounded unfazed about the apparent ghosts in our house, somewhere in my psyche I was in fact afraid. I�ll just lay it out right here�I do believe in ghosts. Or rather, I do believe that it is possible that ghosts and spirits exist. It�s not so much a superstitious thing, as it is the fact that I believe that any thing is possible. I�ve never seen a ghost, but then again I�ve never seen Mars either and I believe that both exist. You know?
So anyway, Friday night I did my usual thing of staying up really late watching TV and reading which I tend to do every Thursday and Friday night. I crawled into bed bleary-eyed at around 4a.m. I had just fallen asleep when I heard a metallic clang, something like a screw falling on the ground, which woke me up. I turned on the light to try and figure out if I had somehow knocked something off my night table, but the floor was clear. Eventually I figured out that I�d probably just heard the metal latch on my shutters hitting the windowsill, and went back to bed. Of course, I kept the night table light on. :)
An hour or so later, I turned over to find my sister sleeping next to me. She must have crawled into bed beside me shortly after completing her dawn prayers.
The next morning I asked her why she�d decided to come sleep next to me, and she said that while she was praying she heard all sorts of weird noises in the house, and the shutters banging and what not, and she�d gotten scared so decided to come sleep next to me. Things have been relatively spook-free since, but it�s no longer as enjoyable as it used to be for me, to be home or up late alone. My late night alone time used to be my favorite part of any weekend. I liked to alternate between the TV room and the study, watching movies and checking email or chatting, groping my way between the two rooms�which are on opposite sides of the house�in the dark. Let�s just say that I have a feeling this month�s electricity bill will be a little higher than usual.
Also, in the last entry, Jing left a comment about needing to get my brother a girlfriend. I don�t know what that had to do with anything, but over Thanksgiving weekend, while with his friends at a Red Sea town, my brother did in fact get together with a girl. Up until this point my brother has been a bit of a player. Ever since dating Ola his romantic side has come out more. Ola, being a good Egyptian girl, is not into casual relationships, and my brother is totally into this being a serious thing. Every time he comes home from seeing her he says, �I think we�re falling in love. This is so crazy.� It�s kind of cute. One night last week, they had their first fight. I was putting my grandmother to bed when he came into the room and said, �When you�re done here can you come to my room? I need to talk to you about something.� I went into his room to find him laying on the bed looking kind of sad, and he said, �We had our first fight, and I don�t know what to do. I�m trying to be as reasonable as possible, but I don�t know how to handle her being this upset with me.� We talked things out, and the next day they had worked things out, but in the course of our discussion my brother said something that really surprised me. I was telling him that guys and girls handle arguments and disagreements differently (duh), and he replied, �Yeah, guys get hurt more.�
That really kind of caught me off guard as that seems to go against a lot of what I�ve seen and experienced in the world of relationships. But it�s interesting to have a young man�s perspective, especially someone as passionate and strong-willed as my brother.
Hooray for young love.