Be my Valentine – Wednesday 14 Feb 07

Well, it’s Valentine Day – the day when all the flower shops are bursting and people are racing round with car loads of red and pink balloons.

The day started out normally enough, we made it to work in one piece (which on Cairo’s roads is a miracle in itself). All the way to work I kept seeing balloons and flowers filling the back seats of every third car we passed.

I had brought some special biscuits for Maha, the girl on my team, to celebrate her promotion. She took them round to share with the rest of the team and they were asking why she had valentine cookies at work and she had to explain they were for promotion, not valentine.

People were extra crazy this afternoon on the roads. It’s like half of them were rushing to get to their valentine dates and the other half were rushing to the florist or chocolate shop coz they’d forgotten what day it was.

Normally I don’t go much on valentine day, it’s so commercialized, restaurants are too busy, too expensive and its all too much work. The price of everything triples; flowers and chocolates become harder to get your hands on than clean air in Cairo.

Anyways, I was convinced this year that so long as an agreement was reached a small gift would be acceptable. So I received a lovely bunch of flowers :) pink and white carnations – beautiful.

Chris said he normally doesn’t do Valentine’s Day either, but he relented and bought the girl he’s kinda seeing a bunch of roses. I was on the way to Ma’adi for my valentine date and he was coming with me to delver his flowers. We’d been on the road about 10mins and moved about 100 meters down the road when I said for the 100th time that I could deliver them for him. So he bailed out of the car and I took the flowers. I got to the door (she’ was supposed to be out with one of her friends and I was going to leave them in her room) – I rang the bell and so was quite surprised to find her there… All I said was, ’You weren’t suppose to be here, these are for you and now I’m going’. She laughed, said they were lovely and I wandered off. I texted Chris and said he should have come after all!

Anyways, errands done I arrived at Wesley’s and we went for dinner. We had Japanese for dinner – it was really nice. I ate sushi – I didn’t think I liked sushi, but it was really nice. I even tried the wasabi and the ginger. I’d never really thought about it before, but I was totally surprised to find out that ginger was spicy. I sound like a total retard, I guess I knew ginger was a ‘spice’ but it never occurred to me that it was a spicy spice. Quite an interesting flavour by itself.

In retrospect being on the roads on Valentine Day probably wasn’t the smartest idea. On the way to Ma’adi I got stuck in traffic. We’re moving along slowly and there were loads of policemen running around. There were even three police trucks with little tiny chicken wire covered windows. To start with I couldn’t decide if they were prisoner transports or troop transports. Every little chicken-wire window had two faces pressed against it… crazy Egyptian traffic police.

So we’ve been siting in this traffic for a little under 10 minutes when Sharif (driver man) reaches over and winds up the passenger side window and locks the door. I locked both the back doors and he said ‘yes, good. I’m not sure what is going on’. We were right next to a big police station (which was why there were so many around) but Sharif didn’t know why the traffic was so backed up, or why the police were running around so much.

We got a bit further along and noticed a car stopped in the middle of the intersection. As we drove around it I noticed a guy spread-eagled on the road. At this point I’m quietly freaking out saying a little mantra in my head ‘Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.’ Then I saw him move (or at least I tell myself is aw him move) and another guy put a jacket under his head (never mind the likely spinal injuries!!).

This all happened about a third of the way to Ma’adi… Sharif spent the rest of the trip dodging other random crazy drivers and getting me to my destination in one piece. It’s funny, the major skill you want in a driver here is the ability to dodge other cars that move at random into your lane.

So this was the trip to Ma’adi, then on the way back to Mohandiseen I see a motorcyclist smeared over the road… ok, smeared is probably a bit of an exaggeration. There was glass and blood, but no bodies so either he’d already been shipped off to be fixed up, or he was one of the people standing round yelling at each other.

All in all a lovely Valentine evening and a crazy drive.