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My partner decided that while I practiced he’d try and find the puppet theatre. He said he’d be back around 8, so I figured he would probably return around 8:30 and I decided 9 would be worry-time. He came back just after 9 much to my relief. He’d found the puppet theatre, but didn’t want to go in because the performance had started 15 minutes earlier, so he walked around Islamic Cairo and was coming back to the hotel when an older (than him) man stopped him. The man explained he was 57 and had studied English and wanted to know if my partner would talk with him. After trying to lose the guy for a few minutes my partner realized it wasn’t going to happen and sat down and had a drink with the guy. Actually he had 3 drinks. The man kept ordering them because “you can only get them in Egypt.” He really liked the mint-flavoured tea. I think he didn’t love the hibiscus drink and I can’t remember what else he had. He finally told the man his wife was going to be very worried if he didn’t get back soon.
9/14
(Thanks everybody for reading the first entries, by the way. I’m glad this is useful to someone other than me and I’m not boring everyone! Much love.)
Last week I had to leave the hotel around 9:35 to flag down a cab by 9:40 to reach the Cairo Sheraton for 9:55, to walk to Mme. Raqia’s for 10. Before Ramadan, I had to wait 30 seconds or more to wait for a good time to cross the street (glad we had all that practice in Vietnam last Christmas. A passerby told my partner to cross the street Egyptian-style you must just walk out and pray). Since Ramadan has started I sometimes wait 30 seconds before a single car drives down the street. And a 10-15 minute drive now takes about 3-4 minutes tops.
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