Through the Glass

Earlier this week, I bellowed into the ancient cell phone bestowed upon me only to be the recipient of a humble invitation to a middle school birthday party. If you do not know this about me yet, middle schoolers exist as my favorite age group exceeded by no other. Period. With this new knowledge, you might anticipate my ready answer. What you do not know is my schedule. Indeed, as the phone conversation progressed, a scooping fear jumbled my thoughts twirling me into the sketchy reciprocation of "I'll have to get back to you."

I know what this generally means to most Americans, especially for a man who has been rejected on occasion by a fair share of pretty girls. This nasty phrase some days ruined my life, yet like word vomit, this crowded phrase spewed out of my mouth. Nonetheless, things fell into place and the ball began rolling.

One thing I forgot to mention: this is one of our Egyptian youth. That means all his friends are not the typical Expat families we generally work with, but instead he kicks it with his Arabic-speaking, broken English, Egyptian compadres. 8 in total.

This single experience may have topped all other single experiences of this journey thus far. Here is how it came crashing down:

First, I hop in a taxi and relinquish my stone-phone to the driver. He takes me somewhere I don't recognize, pointing at an unfamiliar building and hold his hand out for a few pounds. I slapped him five and headed out. I again slid through the phone to redial his sister's (the youth's sister, not the taxi driver's) phone number, as he unwittingly awaited my surprise arrival.

Skipped up 6 flights of stairs where I recognized a similar structure of housing from my American memories. This building was appeared to be like that of low-income, government housing intended to roof a plentitude of families as "cost effectively" as possible. It was shortly after that observation that memory pointed to the surrounding circumstances: 1. We are in Maadi, a.k.a. Mini-America, translation = $; 2. He goes to a decent school where he has learned to speak fluent English, translation = $; 3. He comes from a Christian home, which in Egypt translates to (you got it) = $. To sum it up, as far as Egyptians go, this family has $$$. But their lifestyle would never lead to a typical American connecting such an observation.

On the way up, to make conversation, his sister tells me about the building which is what they would call a tower. Anything over 10 stories constitutes a tower. This concrete construction was well over 20 stories, 26 to be exact. She filled in the conversation by explaining how 26 stories meant over 500 flats (what we would call an apartment).

By now we have completed the spiral of stairs and embark down a dimly lit concrete hallway. Grey walls, gossamer glass, dank doors, all seemingly ready to crumble. So what did we do next? The six of us there at that time battle it out in a friendly fútbol match... in the eight-foot wide hallway. Highlight of the party.

Because of my mastery of the fútbol arts I decided to play goalie as not to cause the young men with me to stumble as we played. As it turns out, my goalie skills are slightly better than my other skills. They only scored through my legs 6 or 7 times.

Tomorrow will come the rest of the stories of:
glass broken
pushing, fun, cheating
eating - you eat whatever and how ever much they give you. you don't refuse food.
language - made fun, perfectly content
parents
walk home - daniel