Ten Steps to Writing a Bestselling Feminist Book in Egypt

Since they make it look so easy, i’ve come up with a few guidelines to follow in case any of us women are planning on publishing a Feminist Egyptian Book soon:

1. Book Title: Sex sells. So do the words Shit, Fuck (or Screw), Relationship and Women. Put any of these in your title and you’ve already done 50% of your work.

2. Book Cover: Sex sells. Put a woman on your cover, preferably one in a short skirt, with luscious red lips or long legs that will have men running for the closest bookstore. If you’re feeling extra cocky, put yourself (or your sister) on the cover, have your brother photoshop it and Tadaaaaaa. If you’re super creative, take a page out of Maria (el3ab el3ab el3ab)’s book and put someone in a tartan mini skirt. Even if it’s a man. Nothing sells like a pair of hairy man legs in a tartan mini-skirt.

3. Don’t Click Spellcheck on Your Word Document. Or have your sister/mother/neighbour/accountant edit it. Be sure to leave in blinding spelling mistakes. Obviously the 1000 friends and relatives that get a free copy of your book won’t mind because they’re only reading it to see if you’ve mentioned them. Make sure your point is clear by USING BLOCK CAPITALS AND QUADRUPLE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!! because God knows we’re not literate enough to get your message unless you hit us on the head with a sledgehammer.

4. Write About How Much You Hate Men. Start off by saying you love men. That will lure naive male readers into reading. Then on page two, reveal that you really hate men because they are responsible for everything wrong in your life. Got dumped by a boyfriend? Take it out on the male race. A man harassed you on the street? All men must pay. Some idiot called you fat (even if it was your dietician)? Write a book and claim that men are a tree full of poison, or something equally catchy.

5. Call yourself a Feminist. Because obviously women who hate men are feminists, right? And writing a book about the big bad evil men is a revolutionary book and will liberate women all over Egypt and around the world. Because no independently thinking woman can come to her own conclusion on feminism without a book that explains Hate+Man=feminist.

6. Sex Really Does Sell. Talk about sex like a guy would, but then explain that women shouldn’t try to act like men or be equal to men because they’ll fail miserably and they’re better off in their designer shoes and perfect red lipstick. Equate independent, successful women with how many designer shoes and bags they own.Got that? Right, moving on.

7. Use Google as a Credible Citation Source. Call yourself an expert. Who needs a degree in psychology or feminist literature when all you have to do is remember a few Madonna lyrics or watch a few chick flicks? That’s education! To justify all your claims about the psychology of men, just google ‘psychology men bad’ and cite your first result. Even if it’s a blog. Or a porn site. Or a shoe shop. We don’t care. If it’s online, it must be true.

8. Self-Love. Nothing sells like a big ego (well, apart from sex). Badger your friends/colleagues/siblings/MSN buddies to wax lyrical about how desirable, intelligent, sexy, fabulous, sexy, talented, and revolutionary (revolutionary sells these days…apart from sex and egos of course) you are. Act totally modestly by having their testimonials printed in your book. Surely women will gain self-confidence and relate to you by reading about how many material possessions you’ve acquired as a result of being feminist and fabulous. Fabufeminist.

9. Add some Poetry for Good Measure. Feel inspired by Dr. Seuss’ Cat in The Hat?  Write about how you feel mad, then sad, then bad about feeling mad and sad. This is art. you are an artist. Keats ain’t got nothin on you. Don’t know Keats? Google him and choose your first result. Assume that your readers haven’t read since third grade and appreciate the same level of literature back when they needed to follow pictures to get the plot.

10. Forget content. Who needs a plot, characters, an actual theory or conclusion when you have all those surefire guaranteed moneymaking points mentioned above? You don’t need to entertain or enlighten your readers, you need to make a point. By completely missing it. At the end of the day, women will thank you. And men will thank you. We’re sure they never knew how evil they were until you wasted 200 pages of their reading lives to explain that. Your next marketing step should be to launch a rehab for men or male workshops so that they can learn from your wisdom and be better…. oh wait, you say you love them just the way they are? Oh. Right. Then.What. Was. The. Point.Of.Your. Book?

And there you have it. Ay khedma.

On Being A Cruslim

Aside from the aforementioned dreaded birthday, the other time of the year that makes me neurotic (well a lot more than the usual neurotic) is Christmas and the end of the year. While many consider this to be a time of celebration and giving, I consider it one of loss, nostalgia and regret, but also one of gratitude and a sneaky, unshakable hope that I’m going to wake up to a pile of presents under the plastic Made-in-China Christmas tree.

This (like pretty much everything in my life) can be blamed entirely on my parents, who, up until I was ten (or four, depending on which parent you choose to believe) led me to believe that Santa Clause (and the tooth fairy) existed purely to buy me presents.

I remember every Christmas Eve being a festive, happy, gift-filled party, usually thanks to my unofficial godfathers, Uncle Mohi and Uncle Victor buying me excellent choices (for a ten/four/28-year old) such as a yellow tea tray set with beautiful tea cups, a quaint tea pot and even a sugar jar (it baffles me how my usually pea-brain-sized memory can still recollect these obscure little experiences when I fail to remember more important things such as why I left my car keys in the fridge again, most of my friends’ names and my sister’s birthday- thank god for facebook reminders). Singing in the Rain would be playing on TV, my friend Maya and her sisters, my sister and I would huddle in front of the fire and ladle generous spoons of brandy cream into our mouths (which led me to recently observe to my mother: “Have you ever thought that maybe I wasn’t sugar high as a kid, I was just drunk?”) and sing all the Christmas songs that my German kindergarten had hammered into my head.

Several years of jovial brandy cream and tea set gifts later, my dad one day decided to burst my Santa bubble by telling me that Mr. Clause doesn’t exist, and I should no longer get presents; as I’m Muslim and Muslims don’t have Santas. This I found to be extremely offensive, especially since it meant no more presents; but I was happily reminded of not one but two Muslim feasts where I get brand-new clothes and clean-smelling cash from all adults (including unfortunate guests who happened to drop by at the wrong time and couldn’t handle my thug-like ten year old attitude of ‘Yo! I’m Muslim! Gimme money!”

Still, the cash was usually a few pounds at the most and always ran out with one trip to the nearest grocers and a pile of Magic Gum, Bimbo, Rocket and bonbon Sima, or it got confiscated by the same Santa-ruining father who put it all away in a precious bank account “for savings.” Two decades later, we’ve forgotten entirely about those bank accounts, but I’m pretty sure there’s a few valuable twenties locked away somewhere with my name on them.
Today, the cash is no longer forked out, as I am rudely reminded that I am an independent, cash-earning career woman and new clothes are no longer necessary since I need two wardrobes in two different cities to contain my collection (and several suitcases and a few boxes under beds). But I’ve always thought that it’s the thought that counts, especially when it’s a well-thought-out wad of cash on Christmas or either of the eids or a new pair of shoes, but hey, I’m just saying. Not dropping hints or anything, Dad.

The whole why-don’t-I-get-Christmas-too debate recently came into question when my last boss decided to split work holidays according to religions; i.e. if you’re Christian, you get Christmas off, but if you’re Muslim, you have to work, etc. I understand that the man was a workaholic and wanted to keep the company running throughout the year, but I smelled religious discrimination and considered reporting him to some workers’ union until I remembered that, like most of my friends working in Egypt, I didn’t have a contract or any legit workers’ papers, and thus did not have a single (nicely shoed) leg to stand in.
Then I came up with the genius decision that I am a Cruslim. Yes, a Christian Muslim. A person of both faiths that gets both the Christian and the Muslim New Year’s Eves off and expects presents whenever possible. My poor boss blinked at me for a good five minutes, and then huffed off and threatened to throw his Café Greco double espresso at someone else instead.

He then got into trouble when Thanksgiving rolled around and the American colleagues got that off but I had to work, whereupon I pointed out that I should get Egyptian Labor Day, Sinai Liberation Day, National Victory Day, Sham El Neseem, May 15th, 26th of July, Father’s and Mother’s Day off. Suffice it to say that I don’t work there anymore.
Still, my closeted religious righteousness is appeased with every Christmas, as I get invited to many generous dinners, where people feed me for a change and I don’t have to raise a finger except to go for seconds, and sometimes thirds ( I eat for a living. I have the stomach capacity to prove it).

That, however, cannot always shake the sense of foreboding and regret that I feel around this time of year when I remember the people that I have lost and the opportunities that I have missed on this strange path that I have taken.
It’s always around this time of year when I look at what I’ve become and what I was supposed to be, and measure the drastic gap of difference between the two. When I was six (or eight or twelve) I had my life excellently planned out. I was going to be an astronaut. A champion tennis player, the grand dame of a ballet school, a dog breeder, the president of the world; all admirable and realistic aspirations that got lost along the way of growing taller and wider, saner and more responsible.

These are the things that I still regret.
1. I regret listening to my ballet teacher when I was twelve, who told me I was too tall and too heavy to ever become a ballerina. After eight years of loving ballet, I quit cold turkey. I still tear up when I watch ballet, and my feet always twitch whenever I watch So You Think You Can Dance. I could have been something.
2. I regret all the amazing trips and job offers that I passed up on, like the free trips to Cyprus, Sharm El Sheikh, Beirut and Damascus, or the job offer at AP, the exchange program in the US, or the writers’ program in Gouna. All these opportunities I relinquished because I was committed to a person or a job, and time has proven neither to be worthy.
3. I regret the friends that I’m no longer friends with, whether because words were spoken and pride got in the way, or we drifted apart because my life was filled with other (more temporarily interesting) people. I’ve found out the hard way that you don’t choose your best friends; they’re the ones that stay when the smoke clears and the glitter fades.
4. I regret the advice that I never took, the people that I never listened to, and as a result, let myself get hurt by people who didn’t deserve my trust. Since then, I’m borderline anal about taking my friends’ advice on who I should date, what I should eat, and does that haircut really suit me even if the hot Lebanese/Italian/French hair stylist tells me I look fabulous.
5. I regret the people that I’ve hurt, whether through carelessness or not being able to control my car or foresee the future.
6. I regret never telling the people I lost how much I love them. Mohab believed in me more than I did in myself, and wouldn’t stop calling me, no matter how often I ignored his phone calls. Roba insisted on cooing at me down the phone, even when I begged her not to sing Hammaki or Tamer Hosny off-key to me, but she was charming and she loved me.
7. And the biggest regret I will always have is the fact that I never answered Vanessa’s calls. She called me every day for five days when I was mourning Roba, and I was too stuck in my bubble to call her back, or even just text her. The day she stopped calling, I decided to call her back, and it was too late. And that’s something I have to deal with for the rest of my life.
My very wise grandmother once said that you don’t regret the things that you do, you regret the things that you don’t. With all the mistakes that I’ve made in my rather short twenty eight years of life, I rarely have pangs of regret other than the next morning of what-the-hell-did-do-last-night-and-how-did-I-end-up-singing-karaoke-on-the-bar-table-and-why-did-my-stupid-friends-take-photos-and-post-them-on-facebook.

At this time of year, I weigh my list of regrets versus all the little milestones that I’ve achieved, and try and spin something positive out of them. I’m young, I’m loved, I have several talents that should channeled into something more productive than feeding a few friends (sorry, guys) or writing a blog that possibly thirty people (including my mother) know about.
So this year, I resolve to stop whining about nostalgia and regret, and start doing something about it. Starting with presents. You know what I want.

On Birthdays And Other Scary Things

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I hate my birthdays. Not in the cute Hollywood I-Will-Not-Be-Defined-By-My-Birthdate-I-Am-At-One-With-Nature-In-My-Flowing-White-Dress-And-Flowers-In-My-Hair-Along-The-Beach kind of way.

No, I’m talking the heaving, hyperventilating, curling into fetus position while mentally dictating my obituary under the bed covers type of hate.

Drama queen? A little, I suppose; yet for as long as I can remember I have always been a nervous wreck around the time of my birthday. Why? Perhaps we could trace it all the way back to when I was three and I had a fit about the pink dress my poor mother was trying to make me wear -yes, even then I had a sense of style and didn’t listen to my mother’s advice.

Mother: Put it on.

3-year-old Me: No.

Mother: Go on, it will look pretty on you.

3-year-old Me: No.

Mother: Your friends are all outside waiting for you and this pretty pink dress will look nice. Don’t you want to go out and play?

Me: (stubbornly) No.

Mother: There’s pink cake too. With sugar icing.

Me: (less confident) No.

Mother: Look, just try the thing on.

Me: It’s ITCHY.

Mother: (exasperatedly) How would you know? you haven’t tried it on!

Me: It LOOKS itchy.

Mother: (Losing it) Look, you either try on the dress now or I’ll put you to bed and your friends can have your cake without you.

Me: (sniffling). Ookay. (Put Dress on) Oooh, it’s prittee!

Mother: (rolling eyes) Oh, don’t you look pretty in that!

But no, that couldn’t be it; I cannot blame a lifelong neurosis on a pink dress and a toddler’s attitude problem.

It’s not that I hate birthday parties; on the contrary, I’ve had many wonderful celebrations full of food, music, games and the people  I love.

It’s never been about the gifts either: as much as I love the shiny, superficial things in life; the experiences are even more valuable, which is why one of my all-time favourite birthdays was when I travelled alone to the Red Sea coast for a long weekend. With just three CDs (Pink Floyd, Dave Mathews and a mixed CD) and the third part of Lord Of The Rings, I spent my days sunbathing and reading, and my nights writing and sleeping. It was simple and relaxed. It was awesome.

But back to my annoying dilemma (I say annoying only because I’ve noticed how my friends get increasingly  wary of me as my birthday approaches, and my parents gently inform me that they will call me in a few days once my wave of pre-birthday neurosis has ended and I’ve stopped yelling at the phone that has imbedded itself into the concrete wall after I threw it)-

Perhaps all this fear, panic and self-indulgent whining have something to do with that time when I was twelve and a strange man came up to me at a Christmas bazaar. Without a word, he took my palm, proceeded to readthe lines on my hand, and then told me that I was going to die at the age of twenty four.

I tried to shake his words off, after all; how would he know? But what if he was right and I only had life till I was 24? That gloomy prospect stayed in my mind until that dreaded birthday finally arrived twelve years later.

Surprisingly enough, I didn’t die; but I did lose my best friend, a death that was quite difficult to bear and unfortunately not the last one to endure. I didn’t die at 23, nor did I die at 25 or even at 27, but that’s how old my friends were when I lost them. It’s always around my birthday when their deaths strike close to home again, when I remember their faces and wonder at the fact that I will never see them grow past those ages; and only they will remain forever young.

I also look back at my own life and question what exactly I’ve made of myself in all these years. I have yet to climb a mountain, yet to write a bestselling novel, yet to make a name of myself that will be remembered long after I’m gone. And when will I be gone? All these are tough questions to face on a day that should involve cake, balloons and glitter; which is probably why I retreat into my three-year-old skin every year and demand a loud party. Bring on the joy, laughter, and the pink icing cake. And my favourite meal of grilled chicken liver, peas and carrots and mashed potatoes; the same I’ve had every birthday since I was five.

This results in an argument with the same mother every year along the same lines:

Mother: I really don’t want to cook chicken liver this year. Can’t we just have a nice dinner at a civilized restaurant instead?

27-Year-Old Me: (Stubbornly) No.

Mother: (Sighing) Look, you’re too old to be this stubborn. Can’t I just take you to Abu El Sid and you order the liver there?

27-Year-Old Me: (Stubbornly) No. It’s my birthday. I want chicken liver. And pink icing cake.

Mother: Does it have to be pink? There’s no pink icing colour available at the supermarket. Can’t I just buy you a cake from Pumpkin?

Me: (lip trembling) Make some. Use rose petals. Or hibiscus flower. Be creative.

Mother: You know you don’t HAVE to have a pink birthday cake every single birthday.

Me: (stubbornly) Yes I do.

Mother: (sighs) I wish I’d had a boy.

Perhaps my fraught nerves stem from a fear of aging, which could probably explain the borderline fanatical obsession with my childhood traditions of pink birthday cakes, chicken liver meals and a big birthday party.

Lately, the aspect of aging has become a lot easier. I’ve begrudgingly come to accept that I will never look twelve again (though I occasionally act it), that cellulite and laugh lines are inevitable (in fact, i’m secretly rather pleased about the laugh lines appearing before the frown lines) and that turning thirty doesn’t necessarily mean the end of life: I have several friends who have survived the big 3-0 and are still cool; so it can’t be that bad.

I’ve also managed to cut back on the fetus-position/howling-at-the-moon-if-I-don’t-get-a-birthday-cake drama.

So, if you catch me scowling on my birthday or failing to smile when you burst into song or wish me a Happy Birthday; please don’t take it personally. I’m probably just fretting over the years of it raining on my birthday and resisting the urge to stamp my foot, have a tantrum and be sent to my room for acting all camp and drama queen-like. But then again, when the lip begins to tremble and the clouds threaten to cover the skies, I am comforted by the memory of that itchy pink dress that turned out to be a lot of fun, just like all of my birthdays and the years that I’ve lived through so far. So far, so good. No?

For The Love of Paris

As with most major events or mishaps in my life, I like to blame my mother for my love for Paris. Thanks to her and her iron fist of TV censorship, I spent much of my childhood ogling happy musicals, many of which were about Paris.

There was Gene Kelly in American in Paris (whom I would also like to blame for ruining my taste in men- I will never find a suave tap-dancing painter who can pull off a red necktie while dangling off a lamppost) and Leslie Caron in Gigi, a film that I later on discovered was actually about a woman training her granddaughter to become a ho. A high-class ho, but a ho nonetheless. Why my mother allowed her seven- and five-year-olds to watch Gigi and yet banned Pretty Woman still baffles me to this day. The only difference between Julia and Gigi is, as far as I can see, the hot pants.

So why I never visited the city of lights in all of my twenty seven years remains a mystery to me. Life tends to get in the way of your plans, you find yourself swayed in unexpected directions. Every birthday, I’d promise myself that I’d see Paris that year (I have tens of journal entries to prove it), but then university/jobs/friends/relationships got in the way; and suddenly, twenty years had passed.

When you find yourself living a somewhat conventional life with a sickeningly responsible work ethic (I turned down free trips to Sharm El Sheikh, Beirut, Dubai and Cyprus for the sake of my work duties- did I mention free trips?), you look back on the opportunities you’ve missed out on with regret. And I hate regret. It’s up there on my list with Nabila Ebeid, snakes and fart jokes.

Maybe it’s the gay man inside of me (I love sequins. I improvise cheesy cabaret songs in the kitchen when I cook- I even have an ‘I Love Butter’ sequence- and I once re-enacted the entire Moulin Rouge duet between Ewan Macgregor and Nicole Kidman on a table- singing both roles), maybe it’s my unabated adoration of French gastronomy; but I’ve held onto my idyllic vision of Paris for years, no matter what people warned me about Parisians being rude, arrogant and smelly.

All I could think of was Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walking the Rive Gauche in Before Sunset, and all I wanted is one photograph of me sipping my café au lait by the river banks, with a necktie elegantly wrapped around my neck (again, I blame Gene for this). And then I can honestly die happy.

By die happy, I mean that every time I get plane fever and think that the plane will crash (which is, um, every time), instead of screaming out ‘I’m too young to die!’ or think of the unborn children/unpublished books/unclimbed mountains/untasted ice cream flavours that I’ve yet to meet, all I can think of is ‘But I haven’t seen Paris yet!’

And then one day, I finally did. A string of mishaps, coincidences and a sudden bout of bravery led me to book my flight to Paris without a map, itinerary or accommodation (until the very last minute) and very, very little money. I didn’t care.  The trip was a beautiful experience, especially because I knew I deserved it.

Why, you ask me?

Let’s say I was part of a business partnership for a few years that I invested all my time, energy and money into. And let’s say that I woke up one day to find that my business partner had frozen my assets, sold my share of the company and left me penniless and stranded in a foreign country with not even a ticket home.

Fast-forward one year later, and I’d worked my shapely butt off to pay off my debts, and when I sold the only remaining asset I’d managed to hang on to, I did exactly what the logical, sensible me wouldn’t have done- and I bought myself a trip to Paris. After all, I earned it.

Every dream, every musical fantasy I’d had about Paris was true.  The city lights do shimmer, the cobblestone paths do wind, and there are buskers on street corners playing Aznavour classics at sunset. The people do roll their eyes and say ‘Ohlalaaa’ as if they’re having an eyegasm, or ‘Coocoo!’ affectionately instead of Hello when they enter a friend’s home. Charming, witty and extremely Mediterranean, they roll their words off their tongue in such an effortless, musical rhythm; that even ‘Pardon me, where’s the train station?’ sounds like the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. Drool. Pick. Jaw. Off. Pavement.

And yes, the Parisians can be rude, but they’re rude in general about everything; so it’s nothing personal. They’re as grouchy and aggressive as the average Egyptian taxi driver. All you need is a bright smile, a little skin and a flutter of ze eyelids; and they move swiftly from C’est Quoi Ca? to Mais Oui, ma Cherie!

And the food. Don’t get me started on the food. Parisian portions are small but unbelievably tasty; so good that even a random brasserie in the middle of nowhere can serve up a Croque Madam or crepe or a macaroon that’s so delectable; you may lose the will to cook every again. I know I did.

And I don’t care how cheesy or touristy the Eiffel Tower is; seeing it at night made the seven-year-old in me finally happy, and all the mishaps and misdirections over the past few years seemed worth the journey. Maybe my love for Paris all these years has been more of an idyllic dream that kept me going; knowing that one day I’d have my baguette in one hand and my bike in the other as I rode alongside the quai de la rapée at night.

The Question of Courage

If you know me well enough, then you know that I don’t take risks. I’m not exactly the brave, daredevil, bungee-jumping type of girl. I’m afraid of heights and flying- which is quite unfortunate, considering I love traveling. Thankfully I’ve come a long way since the summer of 2002, when I literally cried all the way from Cairo to London. The fact that I was howling and reading my Koran at the same time didn’t go down too well with the elderly British couple next to me.

I don’t eat exotic foods (if I can squish it with a flyswatter or make a leather handbag out of it, I’m not eating it), and I don’t dabble in recreational drugs, though I do have a worrying weakness for painkillers and cough syrup (ask me about Toplexil later), and several eyewitnesses can probably testify that they have pretty much the same effect on me as mind-altering substances.

I used to fear cockroaches, especially the flying ones, but if you’re in a family where two out of three will climb on a chair and scream at the cockroach below, someone has to step down and kill it with a slipper. That someone is usually me.

Nonetheless, it’s dawned on me lately that I’ve never been the one to shave my head, get a tattoo, jump off a cliff or dive into the deep unknown (I’m claustrophobic under water, so I don’t scuba dive). If anything, I’ve always been the kind of girl that plays it safe in a boring dependable way, which is sad when you look at my family.

In his youth, my father had quite the reputation for meeting confrontations head on. It’s not that he picked fights; it’s just that his large-as-a-cupboard frame, crushing handshake and could-make-DeNiro-cry glare tended to attract fights to him. Friends would call him for help whenever a fight was going on, and usually he would win. I’m sure he must have lost at least once or twice, but I have yet to meet anyone alive who will attest to that…. My dad’s friends love to tell me stories about him, while he sits blushing slightly, like the one about him playing a volleyball match and disagreeing with the referee, whereupon he slapped the referee so hard that the man went deaf in one ear (myth). Or the one where he got into a fight with a driver on Stanly Corniche, so to make a point he picked up the front of the driver’s car and dragged it for a bit (I’m sure this is a myth; I don’t care if two of his friends swear this happened). My dad had guts; he would literally dive into the deep end and save drowning swimmers from the deceptively strong tides of Agami. Sometimes, he would bring them back alive and other times he wouldn’t; but he had the guts to keep going back.

When she graduated from university, my mother took on a teaching job that took her to different parts of the world every year, from Prague to Belize to Egypt, all on her own with her family left behind. Growing up in a society where it’s completely normally to live with your family till you marry, my mother’s spontaneous adventures through Europe (driving to Greece with a friend in a beaten up car) or her Greyhound journey from the Grand Canyon to New York City with only $40 in her pocket is an adventure that most Egyptians will only dream of or watch in a Julia Roberts movie.

With parents like these, you’d expect me to be a tobacco-chewing, sailor-swearing hippy traveler, and yet I literally hide from confrontations and when I travel, I have an itinerary, budget and every meal, sight and expedition planned down to a T; so that absolutely nothing can go wrong. I am, as one friend called it, ‘an obsessively neat traveler.’

But now that I think about, maybe risks can be taken in different ways. Maybe I’ve never done anything reckless, crazy or highly adventurous before; but I do have courage (surviving breakup, moving across the world, independent woman of substance, blablabla.)

So now, I’m about to embark on a little adventure of my own. A trip to Barcelona and Paris, alone, unplanned, unmapped. Buy a camera, take photos, taste their tapas and cavas by the beach. Sit in La Segrada Familia in silence and sunbathe in the Gaudi Park. Finally make it to Paris; a dream I’ve had ever since I was twelve and watched An American in Paris. Tie a scarf around my neck like Syd Cherisse and sip café au lait by the Rive Gauche. Flirt and cuss in four languages. See the Tour Eiffel at night and walk through Montmartre.

It may be your average vacation, and you may have already been and done that several times before. But to be out of my comfort zone, without my friends, family, maps and itineraries to depend on, takes a lot of guts on my behalf. Perhaps adventures don’t happen to you if you sit around and wait all day. You make your adventures; and I am making mine.

The Eight Symptoms of Being A Foodist

Foodist (plural foodists)

A person who is very interested in food.

A person who is interested in foodism.

A person who discriminates against other people because of the food they eat.

Foodism (plural foodisms)

An exaggerated interest in the preparation, presentation and consumption of food.

My name is Desk Girl and I am a foodist.  It’s not only that I like food a lot (and I mean a lot lot), I also tend to think/talk/dream about it every day. And it can’t be a coincidence that almost all my best friends are fantastic cooks who can spend hours cooing about spices and dissecting recipes off epicurious.com. We are, according to one non-foodist friend, ‘Gourmet Dorks’. I don’t mind being called uncool as long as I’m being fed.

While I’ve always liked my food thanks to a healthy childhood and an even healthier appetite, my evolution from food-snob to full-on foodist happened two years ago when I lived at my friend Nina’s place for a month. I watched her juggle her marriage, her two-year old baby, her job and her social life, while still managing to cook up wonderful, buttery recipes every evening. (You can read her cute food blog here.)

The joy she took in planning and preparing food was so infectious that I soon found myself transitioning from the casual Chuck-Beef-Into-Wok-And-Add-Soya-Sauce Cook into someone that understood the value of basil, balsamic vinegar, shallots and rice that doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Here are some symptoms of my foodism. If you share any of these symptoms, we need to talk.

• I eat Anything, Anytime– well almost everything, except for Black Pudding, beetroots and weird animal parts. Oh and fruit with strange names like Teen Shouky (what on earth is that?) I can also eat under pretty much all circumstances: when I’m angry, sleepy, happy, hot, cold, in planes, over camels, under pressure. I’ve only lost my appetite a total of three times in my life; when I was so sick and feverish, I started talking to my bedroom walls (but that’s another story).

• I have Food Memory:  if you know me well enough, you’d know that I have the memory of a goldfish with Alzheimer’s that used to do a lot of LSD as a kid. I can’t remember what I did two days ago and most people’s names are a blur, but I can easily remember events related to the food I have eaten in the past 27 years of my life: like the soft ice cream cone that I had twenty years ago in London, the fried calamari in Cyprus when I was nine, the Duck a L’Orange in Gouna five years ago, the Layered White Chocolate cake my friend Jasmine made in theater rehearsals in 2001…

• I’m a bit of a Food Bully: I may seem a little, ahem, judgmental of people who don’t care about food, or simply forget to eat (who forgets to eat?!!).  I try to be a little kinder to those with legit food allergies, but deep inside I secretly think they’re just a bunch of sissies. And don’t even get me started on vegetarians: while I applaud their moral efforts, I secretly believe that one dinner at my Aunt Nabila (meat, kofta, escalope, boftek and mombar) will easily convert them back into carnivores.

Example:

Aunt Nabila: Have some kofta ya habibty, you’ve barely eaten anything.A skinny girl like you, we need to fatten you up.

Vegetarian: (stammers) Uh, no thank you, it’s just that all your foods have meat in them; and I…uh…No thank you.

AN: La’a! Don’t tell me you’re (disapproving snort) on a diet!

V: Well it’s sort of a diet. I just don’t eat meat.

AN: (Stunned silence).

V: (Hurriedly) I’m a vegetarian, so I can only eat vegetables, but no animal meats.

AN: Yaany eh, you don’t like my food walla eh? Dah ana I slaved away for two days to make this Ro’aa espeshally for you and you don’t like it?

V: No no, I’m sure it’s wonderful I just can’t eat it because-

AN: If God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made their meat so tasty. Why don’t you like my cooking? What did I ever do to you for you to reject my food?

Good Luck to any vegetarian surviving her.

• I’m a Bit of a Food Slut: I hate to admit it, but like many men I know, the way to my heart is through my stomach. You feed me, I love you. I realized that recently when my skanky colleague skived off work one day, leaving me to cover his 17-hour shift. He walked in the next day with a big smile on his face and an even bigger bag of hot muffins from Costa all for me. I was furious. I looked at the muffins. I forgave him. That easily.

• I’m a Restaurant’s worst Nightmare: if we’re out for dinner, I’m secretly checking the cutlery for dirt and mentally reviewing each and every meal that passes our table. The unfortunate side to being a food snob is that I rarely like a meal if I believe I can cook it better myself. The flipside t o that is  I’ve realized that good food and expensive food are incompletely unrelated- in fact, the best meals I’ve ever had are often off street carts in some of the most underrated parts of the country. Which is why…

• My dream Job is to be a Travelling Food Critic: Do I spend all my money on travelling the world? Check. Max out my credit card on restaurant meals and gourmet ingredients? Check. So what could be better than getting paid to travel, eat and critique the world’s most exquisite and exotic food? Seriously!

• I Buy Your Love with My Food: I like to seduce people into being my friends by slyly throwing dinner parties or “spontaneously” baking truckloads of cookies for them. Ever noticed how you used to hate me at first, and now, for some inexplicable reason, you really really love me? Yeah, it’s because I fed you my chicken.

• I Could Easily eat for Egypt: While I can out-eat a few male friends of mine (you know who you are), the only reason I’m not the size of Eddie Murphy before-Nutty-Professor-Made-the-Potion-And-Discovered-Spandex is because I work out religiously, thanks to an athletic upbringing and a father who affectionately calls me Gamousa every time I gain weight. You know how they say that inside every fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate? Well, inside of me is a fat girl that’s been starved.

So if you find that you have more than a few of these symptoms, it’s time you and I join forces and start a foodist cult or something. Or let’s start off small and have a dinner party first. Bring food.

Shut Up, Ghandi

Breakups suck, but the worst kind is the one where you still desperately love your ex.
Quitting smoking was to me like breaking up with a really hot but mean boyfriend: you know he’s bad for you, but he makes you feel gorgeous, helps you unwind after a long day, likes you to hold him when you’re at a nightclub, especially when he wears that leather jacket…

I recently made the heartbreaking decision to quit the supposedly nasty habit (yeah, yeah, all you doctors out there, spare me the research data).

Most people who know me are always shocked that I smoke and squeak “Noooooooooooooooo!” in slow-motion when they see me holding a cigarette.
“Don’t worry,” I assure them, “I don’t inhale.”

I guess because I work out regularly and eat fruit every two months or so, people automatically believe that I’m a health freak.
Note: I think of butter as a food group on its own, one that should be ingested on a daily basis. If you knew me better, you’d know that I’m a highly addictive person, as evident by my unreasonable intake of sugar, coffee and a shoe collection that spans across three continents (I kid you not).

After a few months of coughing like an old man (there’s nothing sexier than that sound in the morning), I decided to go Cold Turkey on New Year’s Day as one of my overambitious 2010 resolutions.
Then a very evil friend of mine (let’s call him Rami) ruined my plans by buying me two boxes of my favorite Dunhill Blues.
“Quit as soon as you’re done smoking them,” he smiled evilly.

Two months and many happy cigarette hours later, I once again decided that I was done with nicotine. It may have something to do with the offer my genius flat mate made me: “Quit smoking and I’ll buy you a swanky mixer.”
This may not mean much to you, but if you’re a foodist like me, getting a new mixer is like a new flat-screen TV (read my next blog).

It also may have something to do with the fact that I like running, but I recently found myself lagging behind a fat Chinese kid on the jogging track. If a fat Chinese kid can outrun you, you might as well be dead.

My friends have split into three alliances:
First, there are the Semi Supporters, who tell me they’re proud of me quitting, yet they sneakily continue to smoke, which makes me suspect they don’t quite mean it from the heart.
Then there’s the Evil Coercers, who keep trying to seduce me back into their smoking clique by offering me cigarettes and seductively blowing smoke in my face. I understand: nicotine, like misery, loves company, and there’s nothing quite like that special cigarette you share with a friend on the balcony after a good meal.
Then, there’ are the Holy and Pure friends who don’t smoke/drink caffeine/eat fatty foods/curse/double park and like to save animals in their spare time. These friends give me regular pep-talks (high-fives and all), and whenever I’m tempted to smoke, they urge me to eat a cucumber or save a tree or something.
Right.

Much to my dismay, I discovered that smoking had made me a relaxed and easygoing person, and taking the nicotine away had turned me into Godzilla on crack. With rage issues that no Jack Nicholson could cure.

Day One: Woke up from a beautiful dream about me inhaling my cigarette in slow motion, hair blowing back in the gentle breeze, the theme from Love Story playing in the background. Got teary eyed when I realized it was only a dream.

Day Two: WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DRIVING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, LADY?

Day Three: found myself scratching my arm like a crack addict when my friend lit her cigarette next to me. Made her blow smoke my way so that I could inhale some of it. I said I’d quit SMOKING, never promised anything about second-hand smoke.

Day Four: Is it just me or have Men who Smoke suddenly become sexy? The minute a guy lights a cigarette, even if it’s a random stranger on the street, I perk up and think ‘Ooooh, ‘Ellooo!’

Day Five: I now completely sympathize with cranky, nicotine-starved taxi drivers during Ramadan. I have all the withdrawal symptoms: headache, severely short temper, road rage, fatigue, inability to tolerate cheerful friends.

Day Seven: I eat too much chocolate to compensate for lack of nicotine. Great. Now have to quit chocolate AND cigarettes.

Day Nine: And Coffee.

Day Fourteen: I don’t understand why people say I’m intimidating, or duck whenever I pick up a sharp object. I feel completely fine. Can’t seem to stop my leg from twitching, though.

Day Seventeen: Non-smoking Friend, a member of the Holy and Pure that I like to call Ghandi because she thinks the world will be a better place if we hold hands and sing Disney Classics, smiled at me today and said
“Don’t you feel sooo much better now that you don’t have that toxic nicotine in your body? Now you can do anything you put your mind to; you can climb mountains if you want!”
Shut up Ghandi. I’m absolutely miserable.

Day Eighteen: Realized it’s almost three weeks since I quit smoking. Decided to celebrate by having a cigarette. I am so proud of myself.

It’s Good to be an Otta

If you’re a male reading this, you’re probably going to hate me for making the following statement.

As a girl living in Egypt, I pretty much get away with murder. You know it, I know it, every policeman on the street knows it. It can’t be a coincidence that in all my years of driving, I’ve had my license revoked just once, despite driving like, as my father puts it, “a Microbus driver on crack.”

I also think it may be related to the fact that I have boobs, while policemen don’t (as far as I know), which gives me an unfair advantage in many situations.

Not that the boobs need to be shown off to get my way: it’s enough to smile, play with the hair, act shocked that the sign you’re parked under actually means No Parking, while showing  remorse and intent to never break a red light again. A fiver doesn’t hurt either.

And since most Egyptian men believe that women are terrible drivers, I’ve decided to exploit that stereotype: see, the fact that I’m a woman and my car license plate is Alexandrian means that I can pull the idiot woman driver/lost card, and policemen will just roll their eyes and let me go every single time.

Example 1:

I’m driving on the Moneeb Bridge towards Maadi at night while talking on the phone. I see the police check point coming up and a Zabet flagging me down. I stop, wind down my window, and smile sweetly while still clutching my phone to my ear.

“Ya madam,” he starts, “You do know that you can’t talk on the phone while driving? You saw me from far away, you knew I was going to stop you, couldn’t you at least have hidden your phone from me?”

Pause. Brainwave.

“I’m so sorry ya hadret el Zabet,” I squeaked while still, get this, holding onto my phone. “I’m lost and trying to get to Maadi,  so I was calling my friend for directions. I’m not from here; I’m from Alexandria, just look at my license plates, ah wallahi.”

Pause.

“Where in Alexandria are you from?”

I tried not to roll my eyes (Cairenes think that Alexandria has districts like Imbaba and Heliopolis, when we’re pretty much the size of a sardine box with a total of three main streets), and I say, “From Mahatet El Raml, hadretak.”

Zabet’s face changes completely.

“You’re from Mahetet El-Raml? I’m from Roushdy! What a coincidence! That practically makes us neighbors! Ahlan Wasahlan Ahlan! Ok, go ahead take first right then go straight-”

Example 2:

I once got stopped at the Maadi entrance checkpoint at 2AM.  Policeman made the mistake of letting the car in front of me pass and stopping me instead.

“Why did you stop me and not the car in the front of me?” I whined, “Is it because I’m a girl? It’s not correct of you to stop a young woman alone in her car at such a late hour, haram 3aleek, this is not kind; would you want this to happen to your sister or your mother? Would you?”

Policeman rolled eyes, let me through.

Example 3:

“I’m sorry, officer, I had no idea this was an illegal U-turn. Wait, there’s a sign saying so? I don’t know how to read signs! Is this Zamalek? It’s not? It’s Heliopolis? How do I get to Zamalek please?”

Smile.

Example 4:

Radar checkpoint on the Cairo-Alex Desert Road.

“Ya madam, you were speeding.”

“Really? I was?”  Pout.

“Really.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, madam, I am the radar.”

“Oh dear, was it very bad?”

Policeman falters slightly.

“No it wasn’t that bad, it was 105. Speed limit is 100.”

“Oh dear, and I was so sure I was driving at 100.”

“Well you weren’t.”

Smile. “I’m so sorry; I won’t ever speed again. Ha’ak 3aleya.”

Policeman sighs and gives up.

“Fine, just be careful next time.”

And it’s not just policemen. I charmed my way through my driver’s license exam (even though I drove over my examining officer’s foot twice-but that’s another story), into two jobs that I was completely unqualified for (including one where I couldn’t even speak the language), and I have never had my luggage checked at the Cairo Airport Customs- well, except for one time where the bag was bursting with new clothes but I’d left a pile of dirty underwear on top, which freaked the officer out and he quickly rushed me through. Interestingly enough, my bags have never been checked since.)

Yet, while I enjoy exploiting my feminine wiles to escape the occasional parking ticket, I do it with a clear conscience because I know that I live in a country where my rights as a woman are not necessarily respected or protected.

Rising poverty and unemployment rates are leading to higher crime levels all around Egypt, and violence against women seems to be becoming more frequent and more brutal. Every day I read about women being kidnapped off public transportation, gang-raped in broad day light, thrown off balconies, beaten to death, burnt with gasoline, hanged, hacked into pieces.

In last July alone, 500 cases of sexual molestation, 8 cases of rape and 19 murders were reported.

Sexual harassment itself seems to be a rite of passage for every woman on the streets of Egypt: a recent study found that 83 percent of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed or assaulted at some point in their lives.

It’s not much safer at home:  a separate study found that 61.3% of Egyptian men admit to beating their wives.

Justice rarely seems to be served in a judicial system that recognizes honor killings and gives minimal sentences to murderers and rapists:  a man and his son in Beheira were given one year in jail last September for murdering the man’s 16-year old daughter, who had allegedly disgraced her family with her bad reputation. The men got off easy because the judge agreed with their defense that the 16-year-old’s ‘bad reputation’ justified her murder.

So yeah, I may get away with a lot of things, but unfortunately all too often, men actually get away with murder here.

Shake It, Goose!

Maybe I’m getting older, maybe I’m out of practice, but it seems like the dating scene has changed dramatically in the last four years since I last was out on the prowl.  I figured, hey,  flirting again is just like getting back onto a bike, right? Not really.

Don’t get me wrong, I find Egyptian men completely charming in their shy, Neanderthal flirting ways of picking on my hair/outfit/accent all night long before professing their undying love for me, or my personal favorite, ignoring me for years and then professing their undying love for me.  With all their shortcomings, they easily make up for it with their warm smiles, generous compliments and easy-to-talk-to-ness.

But lately, the flirting seems to have gone from clumsy/cute to downright lawnmower aggressive. Or as one friend referred to it, the Hurricane Katrina Approach: you won’t know what hit you till it’s over.

Exhibit A: Cute guy checks me out at the Jazz Club, although, in hindsight, the fact that he reminded me of one of those Prison Break thugs should have been a warning sign. Cute guy simply comes up and starts dancing with me [Note: This is ok as long as you have rhythm and you don’t  imitate Akon’s Smack That moves].

TWO SECONDS into introducing himself as Zizo (ahem) he asks me where I live. Then he asks if I live alone. Then he suggests he drives me home. Then he suggests he comes home with me.  Call me old-fashioned, but I was hoping to get past the small talk about work/childhood/aspirations in life before receiving the indecent proposal.

Zizo (whose last name was unfortunately not Natana) didn’t seem to take my nervous laughter and polite Nos  as a No, because some idiot somewhere started a rumour that women mean Yes when they say No.

Note to men, If I’m pushing your chest away and shouting “No!”, that pretty much means No. Not much room there for misinterpretation.

Eventually the unfortunately named Zizo backed off and went home alone, but it had me thinking: What exactly is it about me that inspires men to use such sleazy lines? Are they so desperate to pull that they’ll risk getting slapped/kicked/beaten up by someone’s thugly older brother?

No, I don’t have a thugly older brother but that’s besides the point.

Exhibit B: I’m dancing at a Lebanese Club in London, and as luck would have it, I’m surrounded by Egyptian men who are obviously homesick and miss Egyptian curves as much as their mama’s molokheya.  This motivates one guy to come up to me as I dance, clap feverishly and yell what is literally translated into ‘Shake it, Goose!’

Geese smell and have ugly feet. How on earth does that count as a compliment?

Goose boy then proceeds to eavesdrop on my conversation with a friend, and when he hears that I’m from Alexandria, he almost throws himself into my arms and shrieks ‘You’re from Alexandria? Say Ayoo, say Ayoo Please! Please! Say Ayooo!”

We don’t say Ayoo, motherfucker.

Exhibit C: Guy checks me out all night long. I know this because he’s standing right in front of me and staring without blinking. Eventually I have to move to the other side of the bar to avoid his glare. At the end of the night, as I’m pulling on my coat, Eyeballer walks up to me and says “Nice Hair!” and then runs the other way.

Seriously?

Exhibit D: Guy puts out his foot as I walk past, makes me trip in my heels, catches me and says: “Oh Look, I made you fall for me!”

Bleugh.

What Zizo the Unfortunate, Goose-boy, Eyeballer and Bigfoot all have in common are two things-

1. They went from zero to 180 in seconds, far too fast for someone as rusty and shy as me. Don’t laugh. I AM shy.

2. Their lines, while sometimes funny, were just too intimidating. If you make me (or pretty much any woman) feel uncomfortable, you’ve lost your chance. No chat up line should make a woman revise her self-defense routine in her head.

Maybe this is how kids flirt these days, maybe I’m too shy, or maybe our generation is so caught up with the fast pace of life that we’re cutting to the chase in everything we do: deliver instead of cook, BBM/poke instead of call, lols instead of tediously spelling out the frigging words, we’re always rushing. But the beauty of flirting is its lazy pace, which gives us time to check each other out and become physically, emotionally and mentally intrigued. You have to establish some electric connection before reaching for the, ahem, light switch.

The ones who’ve worked their magic on me are those who compliment casually, flirt but not agressively, dance but not rub up against me. And above all, they have to make me laugh.

Note to those of you who download chat-up lines off websites (Yes you, I know you do it), the most fool-proof line that works every single time with me is this:

“Hi, my name is [insert name here].” Smile. “How are you?”

That simple.