Float like a butterfly

As it turned out, it was the apricots that did it.

It was not the shawarma or the greasy french fries or the koshary or the coffee, although it could have been any one of them. True, the shawarma and the koshary were both from reputable places, but there's always a risk with Egyptian food. And the coffee...well, for a while, I was convinced it was the coffee.

The day before, a friend and I had gone to Costa Coffee, an upscale chain with American prices. When we walked in, the manager told us we could sit upstairs as there was a "problem with the water" downstairs. Glancing over his shoulder, I noticed the entire downstairs of the shop was flooded, and I thought to myself it must be somehow related to the flooding we'd just passed on a nearby sidestreet. We didn't think anything of it until we got upstairs and realized by the smell, that the water on the floor downstairs wasn't simply a burst pipe. It was a sewage leak. We stayed and ordered, although neither of us could say why. Personally, I attribute my inaction to not wanting to be thought squeemish or ungracious to the staff. After all, who in Egypt hasn't encountered some raw sewage from time to time? Of course, this line of reasoning was completely illogical, even dangerous, but I didn't consider that at the time.

My friend ordered strawberry juice and I, a cappucino. Her strawberry juice came bottled; my cappucino was made at the shop. For that reason, I deduced, my run-in with raw sewage had caused my illness.

Still, as I said, it was the apricots that caused my dysentery, fever, and fainting. I learned this a few days after I had recovered, when I ate the apricots again and began to feel sick. I thwarted the illness the second time with an "abdominal antiseptic" obtained from the AUC clinic. It just goes to show, however, that in Egypt anything can knock you down at any time.

As I see it, life in Egypt is like a boxing match against a pretty tough opponent. An inexperienced fighter doesn't anticipate the punches that come at him, so when he get up from being punched, he is quickly knocked down again.

On an average day during my first weeks in Egypt, I would make it down to the shuttle in the morning to find that it had left ahead of schedule. There would not be another for an hour, so I would need to get a cab, but it would take me several tries to find one that would aggree to take me where I wanted to go. Often cabbies would simply shake their heads and drive off. Others would wait until I got in, then half a block later demand a ridiculous price, and I would have to get out and find another cab.

Arriving at school, I would have to negotiate the AUC "bureaucracy," a euphemism for describing the system of self-important people who are paid despite their complete disregard for the fact that they have jobs to do. The worst of this set is the director of the International Student Services Office, a witch of a woman decked out in a suspiciously wig-like coifure and shimmering pancake makeup caked inches thick on her face. This woman -- let's call her Tomato -- carries a Louis Vuitton purse, is directly decended from the prophet (and "has the certificate to prove it"), and appears to derive sadistic pleasure from telling people she can't help them.

Nevermind that there are nearly 400 international students this year, she insisted on acting as "advisor" to all of us. Nevermind that there wasn't enough time in the day on the designated advising days to meet with all of us or that the signup sheets for appointments didn't get one as far as crossing off a name from an earlier appointment and substituting one's own. Nevermind that having an appointment was the only way to add a class, because meeting with Tomato was no guarantee that one would get a class, regardless of how many credits one's home university required.

Once, for example, I came to an appointment with a page-long list of backup courses in case the witch didn't allow me into the classes I wanted. (At a previous appointment, she had refused to let me take upper-level political science lest I, a non-major, "undermine the reputation of the school"). As I read through the list of more than 20 courses, she declared each one closed. When I finished, she asked me if I was satisfied with my schedule. Trying to keep my cool, I explained that my university required me to have five courses, and as I only had four, I needed another course. She told me that it was my responsibility, not hers, to find a class that was open and that I should come back to see her when I did.

And that would only be half of an average day.