On the Run

"On the Run" shop
Mobil gas station
Cairo Ring Road
Near Mirage City


I've parked my car and am getting out. Someone pulls up and parks to my right. He flings his door open and it hits my car.

"Sorry, I do apologise. Wasn't paying attention," he says. It's a young voice, sounding husky and well-brought-up.

I am about to give him a cutting look, then I notice he is wearing police uniform (all whites) and the trademark Ray-Bans.

"Fine. Okay," I say.

By the time I am walking into the shop, he is coming towards the entrance. An attendant greets him, the other attendant calls out after him: "Hope you had a pleasant journey sir."

"Hooda! [Nickname for Mahmoud.] All good?" He acknowledges his fans. His pistol is in the holder, hanging off his belt, and he is sauntering into the shop.

Inside the shop, at the espresso counter, the guy behind the machine says: "Sire Kareem, the usual for you sir?"

"Yeah ..." he oozes, John-Wayne-like.

"I waited for you yesterday Kareem Pasha [a bigging-up] for two hours, but then I had to go," says the espresso guy.

"Dude, I am so tired, I've literally just rolled out of bed. I'm not seeing straight. I need that espresso pronto. I swear to god, I was driving dazed just now," the cop says.

"Coming right up, [King] Kareem," the counter guy says. [The tone is deferential.]

"Naah, I couldn't come in yesterday to see the stuff you told me about. We were ON DUTY." the cop says.

"God give you strength, sir. No problem, just let me know when you want to have a look at the stuff, and I will bring it over from the hotel," the espresso guy says.

Whereas the cop had paid for some food at the main counter, something told me he was not going to pay for his coffee. And sure enough he didn't.

"Everything the way I like it, eh? Sugar, everything?" the cop says.

"Of course, yeah," the guy says. But he actually had not put any sugar - it is not part of his job. He was just deferentially agreeing, letting the cop correct the shortcoming himself later. [This is a common attitude in Egypt: people do not like to say no, they will lie and say yes, just so as not to disappoint you. You can fix it yourself later, they reason.]

The cop, Ray-Bans still on, goes off to stand at one of the waist-height tables. He lights up a ciggie, gets on the mobile to natter, and starts sipping his coffee. He notices the lack of sugar and casually reaches out for a pack. He cuts quite a handsome figure against the bright blue skies behind him. He certainly has presence.

Employees from the shop pass him, and everyone throws a smile or a hello. He acknowledges them with small nods.

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Cairo London. London Cairo.

* Before leaving Cairo, I sent my stuff to a 'recommended' dry cleaners and dropped some shirts at the ironing man. I arrive in London to find the dry cleaners have done a shoddy job (they might have worsened the condition of my clothes than improved them), plus my white shirt is missing its collar button (and the ironing man did not bother to tell me). My first instinct is to do like everybody in Egypt does: blame the country and its shoddy citizens. And I just have.

(I know, I know, it happens all across the world.)


* As if to compensate for the last time I flew out of Cairo Airport, my passage through the airport this time was very smooth and quick. I wished Egypt was like that all the time. Catching some "quiet time" in the airport's departure area, overlooking a wonderfully bright, afternoon-lit expanse of golden-coloured runways, arrays of apartment-blocks filling the horizon a safe distance away, I could almost retrieve the lovely Cairo of my parents' and grandparents' time. The food area on level three is nothing special, but sitting, musing, and doing nothing to the cool 1950s jazz put me in a good place.


* On the BMI flight from Cairo to London, they had placed a copy of the Daily Mail (oh what a wonderful tabloid) on each seat. The first three pages were coverage of the story of a baby born two days after her mother had died. Doctors had kept the mother's heart working even after she went brain-dead - so they could rescue the baby. The father is Egyptian, the late mother was English. What was God telling us?


* I attended my university's graduation ceremony - an event to celebrate the graduation of students of the 2007/2008 academic year. At the Barbican - a distinguished venue by all standards, the auditorium accommodates at least 1000, with hundreds of people in the balcony. They played classical music as we, staff, marched up to the stage to our designated seats.

The first time I attended the event, I was awed: I was nervous and looked only at the floor. Things change! For the past couple of years I have trodden up and down the aisle imagining the audience's polite applause was all for me - because I deserve it.

Our job at these functions is to clap, for almost 90 minutes. You get into a rhythm. "FirstName LastName" - clap, clap, clap - watch as they walk past - "Anothername Anothersurname" - clap, clap, clap, repeat a couple hundred times.

I tried to think whether one could tell anything about the character of a person the way they walked across the stage, after they've received their award and the audience's eyes had moved on to the next person. Could I tell the fake, the self-absorbed, the warm-hearted, the genuine, ... just by the way they walked? Because it is interesting: a student who never cracked a smile all year, now walks with the most genuine, big smile across her face like she was a little child, like it is so easy to please her. Soon, she will be someone's wife and find her husband unsatisfactory in so many ways, soon she will be a mother with very definite views on how she wants to raise her children.

The answer is no. You can't tell anything. Most people looked down. They took the award, they took a step or two, realised the moment was finished and they just had to walk across the stage and down the stairs, and they looked down. 80% of them did that. Only a few people did not look down at all. Only one or two strutting dudes dared looked at the audience and whip it up.

After this inspired study, you might be surprised to learn that when it was time for us to leave the stage (at the end of the ceremony), I found myself looking down most of the way from my seat to the exit.


* This year's graduation speech was short and uninspiring. Last year's - by the sponsor of the Ubuntu distribution of the free operating system Linux - was funny and inspiring, and left most staff devastated. 34 year old Mark Shuttleworth is worth about $500m.


* I run into a colleague at the graduation ceremony. She asks after me. I say I am fine. She searches a bit more. I can't find more to say. She tells me I look well, really well. "Happy and contented."

"Happy and contented? That's a tall order," I tell her.

She laughs. There are a few seconds of pause.

We say goodbye and go our separate ways.

Then it occurs to me that I hardly said anything nice to her. Like what clear, bright blue eyes she has.

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