Egyptian home remedy for growing your very own face mole!

Ever wanted a mole on your face? Now you can have one with my grandmother's home remedy!

Step One: Take a needle and heat the end with a lighter
Step Two: Prick your face numerous times with said needle until your face bleeds
Step Three: Dab milk onto the self-inflicted wound
Step Four: Draw your desired mole onto this milk-stained wound, with an eyebrow pencil
Step Five: Leave your face alone for an entire day then when you wake up voila! You have your very own face mole to love and cherish as long as you both may live.

This was a genuine home-remedy during my grandmother's twenties and thirties. My mother's mole is in fact a product of this.

Getting conned in Khan el Khalili

I am almost going to swear to myself that I will NEVER go to any touristy areas in Egypt again - Luxor, Aswan, Khan el Khalili - all places that drive me crazy! I think I'll stick to Shubra from now on.

Yesterday I went with my sister and cousin to Sidna el Hussein/Khan el Khalili/El Mosky. I wanted to show my cousin a famous cafe called El Fishawi, but I had a feeling we wouldn't be enjoying our time there.

I swear not a single sentence was exchanged between the three of us during our entire time at the cafe. Instead we were shooing and heshing the salespeople and beggars that came at us from every angle. Not 5 seconds (no exaggeration!) went by without someone approaching us.

I took to keeping my head down, as if in some sort of hallucinatory trance. My little sister, was still not used to assertively telling the salespeople and beggars to 'TAKE A HIKE!!!' Instead, she gave them her beautiful smile and said in the kindest voice she could possible muster, 'La, shukran' (no, thank you).

I felt it was safe to lift my head out of my trance for a little while, just to survey the situation, when I found my sister looking at a set of 'genuine silver bracelets and earrings'.

'It's genuine, it's genuine', the salesperson (who looked like he'd just recently been released from jail) assured us. 'Look...', he then took it upon himself to set fire to the jewellery with his lighter, in an attempt to show us that the colour didn't disappear. He then kindly wrapped the bracelet around my sister's wrist, causing her much discomfort from the burning heat, radiating from the bracelet.

The starting price was 80LE. It then went down to 50LE. We said we didn't want it. Then, things turned nasty.

'Where are the earrings?' he said.
'They're in your hands', we replied.
'No, no the other pair'.

We proceeded to search under the tables and chairs for the missing earrings. Something told me that he was setting us up but I went along with the act anyway.

When we didn't find the earrings he tried even harder to sell Yvonne the bracelet, blaming her for losing his precious merchandise. I couldn't take it any longer so I screamed at Yvonne, 'YVONNE SAY NO!!!!!!!!!!'

This got the entire cafe staff to crowd round us. The salesman was shouting that he wanted to take us to the police station. I didn't quite understand what was happening, but I knew we had to leave. The cafe staff were crowding round the salesman, and we slipped out from another entrance.

After buying a few souvenirs and gifts in the bazaars, it was time to go home. Our legs were as heavy as lead, and we could hardly bare to stay on our feet a moment longer. Unfortunately for us, not a single minibus had an empty seat.

After 10 minutes we heard a fight in one minibus, between the driver and a female passenger.

'Get out then!' the driver yelled.

'Yes, this is our chance!' I thought to myself. But we were too slow. A man jumped into one of the two vacated seats. But I didn't give up.

I jumped onto the minibus and sat on the only vacated seat. My sister jumped on after me and sat on my lap. Then my cousin sat on my sister's lap. Not a single one of us could be classed as 'child-sized', so this was quite a feat.

Three of us were sitting on a seat meant for one person. We couldn't even shut the minibus door, so as we sped over the bridge that connects El Hussein with the nearest metro station, the door was still open, and we were just waiting for a sharp turn to send us flying out onto the bridge.

Thankfully we made it all in one piece. One woman sitting behind us smiled at me and said, 'They should erect a statue in your honour'. I didn't understand what she meant exactly, but I think it was because I was carrying two almost fully-grown women on my lap, or maybe because I was crazy enough to even attempt such a ridiculous travel arrangement.

Drivers and motorcyclists that drove beside us pointed and laughed at the tower of bodies squashed into the minibus. I think what really shocked them - since this in a common occurrence in Egypt - was that two of the girls looked almost certainly as if they were tourists. Tourists in Egypt never ride minibuses, let alone form human towers in them. I couldn't stop laughing the entire way.

The lack of enforced rules in Egypt completely contrasts with England's strict regulations. But although the lack of enforced rules in Egypt may cause much chaos and confusion, it gives life plenty of flavour.

Cairo never ceases to surprise me

On any day I venture out into the big, bustling city of Cairo I know one thing for certain: I will see something I've never seen before, that will make me question humanity.

Today began quite normal. I had my Arabic lesson Down Town, battled with hundreds of flies (I do not take the word battle to be the slightest exaggeration. There, in the cafe that I take my lessons, I am faced with an endless assault of flies. They try to abuse me and violate me in any way that they can. At one point there were flies on my lips, flies on my eyes and flies all the way up my arm that it looked like I was doing some demented dance to wave them off), learnt some new Arabic words and drank tea.

Then, as I waited for my friend to use a restaurant toilet I took it upon myself to spy at a very unusual woman.

She was dressed in a pink suit and had her hair covered with a white swimming cap-type bonnet. She had a Styrofoam box in her hand which she was eating rice from. The way she ate was mesmerising. I think she may have had an eye problem, but she would put her face so close to her food that I though it might have ended up sticking to it, then when she had located the secret wherabouts of her food, she proceeded to take quick shovel-fulls of rice.

She was eating whilst standing up (as she had ordered take away), and she chose to stand under the big menu at the front of the shop. But in her attempt to make herself invisible in her conspicuous spot, she pushed her shoulder onto the nearby wall, as if trying to become one with the wall.

After she had finished eating she shuffled (she was either unable to or wished not to expend too much energy lifting her feet off the ground) to the nearby bin and threw her box in. She then shuffled back to the place under the menu that she had claimed her own.

I thought she had generously given me my fair share of entertainment but there was still more to come.

After rummaging through her brown bag she produced a large medicine bottle.

'Oh', I thought to myself, 'She's eaten her lunch so now she's gonna take her medecine'.

She opened the bottle and poured some of the illustrious liquid into the palm of her hand. She then rubbed it into her hands.

'Oh, so it's some sort of hand sanitiser', I decided.

Then she smothered her mouth with yet more liquid.

'Mouth sanitiser?'

Then she smeared it all over her clothes.

'Clothes sanitiser?????'

My friend reappeared and we made our way to the Metro. I was reluctant to leave that interesting woman, feeling a need to discover what she was about, but I decided not to pursue my inquiries in case she started beating me. I tried in vain to understand what was in that brown medicine bottle, but I had nothing.

The next incident of the afternoon was in the metro. The police were arresting the sellers that sell tissues, jewellery, tables, sweets and clothes on the metro, so there was a lot of commotion as these sellers tried to get away.

After one such episode a woman wearing the full face veil stood up and started addressing the metro carriage. I've obviously seen woman wearing the niqab (face veil) before, but this woman must have been 6 feet tall. From head to toe she was wearing black. There was not even a hole for her to see through - she had fabric over her eyes so I have no idea how she stopped herself from bumping into things.

The woman began by making a few statements about protecting our personal belongings and keeping our bags close to our bodies. She then went on to preaching about the need to read the Holy Qu'ran because it is the word of God.

Last week a woman was distributing leaflets that said some members of the State Police were wearing the niqab and going around telling people to dress properly. The leaflet (Muslim Brotherhood material) advised us to ignore these people and (in proper Egyptian fashion) to take off our shoes and begin beating them. I could just imagine myself doing that.

At the time I was trying to figure out whether this woman was part of the state police - 'Should I start hitting her with my shoes?', I wondered.

It was amazing to me that this woman, who was speaking to the entire carriage in a confident and authoritative voice, could have been ANYONE. Is it true then that anyone can speak to anyone if they do so in a confident and assured tone of voice? Can sounding confident help you to get away with anything?

Every day I venture out into the big, bustling city that is Cairo, I feel that I not only learn new things about the World and people, but through my interactions with said people I learn a lot about myself.

Cairo chaos - getting my leg stuck between the metro and the platform

I woke up this morning and decided to visit Saad Zaghloul's home, near the centre of Cairo.

Saad Zaghloul was the founder of the Wafd political party, one of the biggest parties in Egypt, until it was dissolved in the 1952 revolution. When the British exiled him to Malta then the Seychelles for his antagonistic political activities, the Egyptian people were furious and this was one of the major factors that caused the 1919 revolution. The occupying British forces had begun their occupation of Egypt in 1882 and after extensive striking, 1920 saw the end of the British protectorate of the county.  He was also the main writer of Egypt's first constitution, in 1923.

I got off at Saad Zaghloul, a metro station I had never got out of before. In front of me was a huge Ancient-Egyptian-esque temple, that the unhelpful men selling T-shirts around the metro entrance, told me was Saad Zaghloul's house. It turns out it was his mausoleum and after circling this structure for 15 minutes in the unbearable heat, I finally found the actual house.

Inside, I exchanged the usual 'question and answer session' of my origin, instigated by the combination of  Egyptian ID I presented to the door man and my Irish face. With these formalities over, I was shown around the house by a kind, smiling woman. There was another guest walking around with me, who after the tour, I found out that she was a half-Italian, half-Dutch Opera singer from Florence, with an audition later that day.

The house was very grand, and in very good condition, and the tour was really quite interesting. The woman explained to me that at the top of the wide staircase of the house were two parrots on either side of the large doorway. These parrots were trained to recognize Saad's footsteps on the stairs, and as he approached one parrot greeted him in French, the other in Arabic. He also had a very interested shower room, where he sat on a large green beach chair, as the shower water poured over him.

I also learnt that Saad Zaghloul died on the 23rd of August 1927, and that the British exiled him from Egypt on the 23rd of December (of some year, that I have forgotten and can't find on wikipedia!). On the day he died, his wife stopped turning the dial on the beautiful French mechanical calendar they had in their bedroom, stopped forever on the 23rd of August.

Then of course, the constitution was written in 1923. I really believe that this number, 23, is important. It features highly in my life (I was born on the 23rd of July -the anniversary of the 1952 Egyptian revolution-, among other instances), and I do not want to dismiss it as purely coincidence. (I refuse to be affected by the negative implications of Jim Carrey's horror film, The Number 23, which my slight obsession with the number begun way before the release of said film).

I walked through the market next to the house, with the Italian girl. She spent a while arguing with an electronics' vendor, who she had a sneaking suspicion was trying to take too much money from her, but in the end she just accepted his reasoning. I bought some bananas and grapes, and handed over a 100 pound note. The change was given to me with 10 pounds less than it should have been, and I nearly didn't notice it. 'Hagg, I need 10 pounds' I shouted. He handed it over without looking sheepish or questioning the validity of my statement. That told me that he had intentionally given me the wrong change and that he was used to playing that trick with foreigners.

This kind of incident has been on the rise in the last few weeks. I handed a kiosk vendor a 100 pound note, which he conveniently forgot to give me the additional 50 pounds change that he owed me. Luckily I didn't let him get away with it.

I decided to go to Attaba to find some headphones for my phone. I spent several consecutive days looking for my pair, but I have finally concluded that they were picked out of my bag whilst I was being jostled in Tahrir Square on Sunday.

As I left the metro, there were crowds and crowd of people trying to get on. I thought I'd be safe if I kept close behind the woman in front of me, as she battled to make her way out of the metro carriage. I was taking very small baby steps to get off behind her when, Whooooooooooooosh! My leg slid down from under me between the gap the metro made with the platform.

I just sat there, one leg dangling in the gap (the entire leg, by backside was actually sitting on the platform edge), whilst women all around me screamed and screeched. In the moment that I fell through the gap, I was overcome by a surprising calm, despite the very really danger that I was in, of losing my leg from the upper thigh downwards. Instead I just felt the presence of the women around me, and blamed them slightly for what happened to me, wanting them to feel guilt for what I decided that they had done to me. An evil part of me wanted the metro to pull my leg off, just so the women would be sorry... (Twisted, very twisted thinking I realise).

One fast-thinking woman pulled me up and I walked away with a relieved smile on my face and a temporary pain searing through my inner thigh. My aunt later told me how the women could have carried on boarding the carriage regardless of my fall, marching on top of me in their blind determination to make it onto the carriage, and how I was very lucky that they hadn't.

I was surprised with how fast I found the headphones in Attaba (one of the busiest places in Cairo, I feel like an ant when I go there, imagining what all the people must look like from a bird's eye view), and even managed to find a book I wanted to read ever since my friend recommended it to me - Paolo Cuello's The Alchemist.

I was not spared peace of mind on the metro ride home either. A woman selling belts in the ridiculously busy carriage kept smacking me on the back of my head with her entire stock of belts, as she swung them onto her right shoulder. The first time she did it, I was startled. The second time she did it, I was angry. The third time she did it, I was calm, telling myself ''she's gotta do, what she's gotta do to make a living!'' How quickly my emotions fluctuate here in Cairo, I thought to myself.

When my metro stop came, I jumped off the carriage and made it home in record time. I recounted the details of my day to my family, tried to read my current book (The World's Religions, by Huston Smith), but instead I lulled myself into a deep, tired sleep.

Cairo is exhausting. But it's where Life happens.

Morsy becomes president of Egypt, and I think I'm about to die in the Tahrir Square crowds

I was walking around the Tahrir Square vicinity, planning on catching the metro home. I had a choice when I came to a fork in the road, I could turn right and get on the nearest metro, or I could turn left and see what all the fuss was about in Tahrir, after seeing throngs of people shouting, chanting, smiling and waving huge Egyptian flags in the sky. I chose to go to the left.

I have never been somewhere so crowded in my life. Cars that passed were beeping the 'wedding march' song and others were singing a faintly familiar football tune, but with the word Morsy repeated numerously. The happiness in the air was infectious as groups of teenagers took to dancing in the streets.

I felt satisfied with my solo-exploration to the outskirts of Midan Tahrir, and I decided to catch the metro. The first metro entrance I met was closed. The second was literally jam-packed with people and I didn't fancy being stuck underground. I gave my aunt a call and she suggested that I go to the next metro station which would be less crowded. I agreed, and made my way through the square - huge mistake!

With every step I took to get to the other metro station, I was unknowlingly pushing myself deeper and deeper into the sea of men standing in the square. Every step I took I thought I was getting closer to leaving the square, but reality soon hit me.

Men were squashed around me on all sides. Some were gentlemenly and let me pass as best as they could in the crowded area. Others, could not be said the same about.

One man grabbed me from behind, so I spun round just in time to see his hand retreating. I looked him in the eye then punched him in the shoulder. He retorted defensively, either pretending or genuinely unsure why this foreign girl just punched him and then started swearing at him. My Egyptian friend who I told about the incident, reassured me that he was most probably the culprit, since he was so defensive about himself.

It was the bearded men who were surprisingly the most gentlemenly, and they made way for me to pass, instead of trying to touch me like the disgusting men behind me were doing.

Soon, I found myself unable to escape. The men towered around me on all sides, and there really was NO WHERE for me to go. A boy about my age told me in English 'You must go. Too crowded'. No, you don't say? 'Where shall I go??????????????????' I screamed to him in Arabic.

Seeing me in desperate need of being rescued, he took me by my wrist and literally fought his way out of the sea of men surrounding us. A few minutes into the escape, a genuine thought came into my head ; 'I'm going die. So here is where it is going to happen, in the heart of Tahrir Square, squashed and suffocated by men.' I truly embraced this thought and calmed myself with the thought that 'We've all got to go sometime'. I guess it should have been shocking how quickly I embraced my possible death.

Actually, after I had this thought, another thought entered my mind. And that was the sort of the two frogs in the tub of milk. One frog gave up trying to escape from the milk, and died. The other one kept paddling his feet in the milk until he churned it into butter, then hopped out into freedom. For a brief second I was going to succumb to being the first, dead, frog. I was going to stop moving and just sit down on the floor, tired of struggling through the sea of bodies. Then, the second frog made its appearance, and I decided to be brave and keep fighting through the crowds.

When I felt a blast of cool wind hit my face, I was so relieved and felt so much gratitude for the man who had led me out, of what I honestly thought would be my death. I shook his hand firmly and thanked him curtly, before he got the idea to try to further any kind of relationship with me.

On my way out of the square, I spied another foreigner girl. She was on her own, taking pictures, and after my ordeal I felt that my social barriers had been demolished, and I just went up to the girl and started talking to her. She was German, but lived in England for the last 6 years, and was working for a newspaper (I think) in Egypt.

To get home, I had to catch the metro that I was going to take if I had just turned right, instead of left and going into tahrir. To get to the metro I had to cross one of the most famous bridges in Cairo - Asr el Nil. There was a loud, noisy fanfare, that I expect will continue all the way into the night, and there were more than frequent shouts of 'Morsy'.

My political opinion of the results (I can't believe I actually wrote, my policial opinion! I never thought I would write that, as I am generally apathetic to British politics, so I extended this belief to all politics. However, coming to Egypt has really shaken things up for me, in terms of how to view the importance of politics for me personally) is that it was better for Morsy to win. This way Egypt has avoided a nasty backlash that would have resulted if Shafik (tied up with the old regime) had won. Morsy, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, however, is a very weak personality, and I believe that he will be controlled by higher figures, so in effect will be just the puppet in the political arena.

I was quite surprised that the votes were not rigged for Shafik to win though, since it would have been in the best interest of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces for him to win, and they are the ones calling the shots at the moment.

I speculate that Morsy's election will have appeased the rebellious masses, but SCAF will still retain the majority of power, and the president will effectively be powerless - I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood majority parliament was dissolved last week, with a flick of SCAF's wrist, so what's stopping them from doing the same to Morsy? I think may be a month will pass (or less) before the non-existnnece of Morsy's presidential powers will emerge.

The Egyptian elections

I woke up early-ish this morning, to make my way to Cairo's Down Town to meet my freind and Arabic teacher in one of the many ahwas (cafes) that were dotted around the centre.

T took my camera with me, just in case I saw something unusual, it was after all a significiant day in Egypt's history!

On the way to the metro I saw a huge desert-yellow tank gliding along the street, with soldiers wearning bright red hats standing out from the top. It resembled a strange parade, of soldiers surrounded by the usual hustle and bustle of Cairo's Shubra Street.

When I returned from my lesson, I went with my aunt to the polling station. My aunt had already been, to take my gran to vote, and she told me that there had been minibuses shipping poor farmers and labourers to the polling station. These people were all voting for Ahmed Shafik or Amr Mouusa - both men from the previous regime.

These men have many things going for them, and have the biggest chance of winning. Egyptians that are afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power, are likely to vote for them. Egyptians that are convinced that the country has descended into chaos since the revolution and those that were not aware of the atrocities that the previous regime committed, are likely to vote for them. Egyptians who benefitted from the previous regime, are likely to vote for them.

Even if they do not win legitimately, many believe that the army generals who currently make up the transitional government, will see to it that they are in power.

We will see what happens on Friday when the results are announced.

The day before the Egyptian elections - a day of family fights

Yesterday was the kind of day that happens once every five years in normal, quite households that do not suffer from hypertension, melodrama and severe mood swings. In my family it happens at least once a month.

Yesterday our house was up in flames (almost a literal description if I had been allowed to do what I threatened to do), people were crying, screaming from the deepest part of their being and of course, slapping their faces with great frequency and gusto.

Yesterday my uncle was due to fly to the Gabon, where he works for 3 months on and off on a ship. Yesterday my gran was feeling very agitated and had wound herself up tightly, ready to release all of her tension on whoever was unlucky enough to get in her way.

The result of this tension was that my aunt started to rip her hair out and pack her bags, swearing to take her children and move anywhere else. My uncle (not the one travelling) ended up getting into a fight with the neighbours in the street and just managed to stop himself from whacking them round the head with a large metal stick.

These events were spurred on from a single sentence my gran (who was anxiously waiting to get to the airport, wanting to get there 5 hours before we needed to be there) said to both my aunt and my uncle. That was "If you don't want to take him to the airport he can get a taxi". BANG, the fire had been lit, and everything that happened after only set to anger it more.

In the end we managed to get my uncle to the airport (albeit to the wrong terminal because he hadn't taken the liberty to actually check his ticket before we left) and he got on his flight.

On the way back, my cousin called my aunt, panic in her voice. She had heard a lot of commotion in the street in front of us and went to see what had happened. 3 people had been shot dead by passing security forces, and their bodies had been left in the street for long enough for most of our neighboorhood to see them. Apparently they had been a group of hooligans trying to rob a shop, so they were stopped in their tracks by their security forces.

It's difficult to believe anything you hear here. It seems as though you cannot get an unbiased account of anything - evereything that happens is tightly bound in conspiracy, politics and strong unfounded beliefs.

In fact, yesterday I was thinking to myself how inadequate I felt that I didn't know much about Egyptian history. Then I said to myself, but how can I be sure that what I read online or in history books is the actual truth? How can bwe believe any history that we hear? During Mubarak's reign, history taught at schools in Egypt had been 'modified' to teach innocent minds that Mubarak had countless significant achievements under his belt, that were all either fake or done before his time.

How do we know what is actually true? Ever?

This thought made me feel a bit depressed. I have now decided to just learn from any source I can, but also not to forget the source that I learned it from, instead of blindly believing anything that interested me. In short, yesterday I decided that I would stop being GULLIBLE.