Community

I cried in the taxi on Monday. There are times when I reach my emotional limit and I feel like I just can't do it anymore, but I have to because I'm in a taxi and even though he's taking the long way, through parts of downtown to get somewhere that's simply south and slightly west of me, I have to stick it out and wait until we get there and see how much the meter has run up and how much of my meager allowance I'm going to have to shell out this time before I can breathe a sigh of relief until the next time when I have to do this all over again. It's the silly female part of me that couldn't stop the floodgates once they opened, and then, because my taxi driver could see my tears in the rearview mirror, I found myself having to once again explain my overactive emotions in Arabic. The only place I felt comfortable that day was Manshiyet Nasr. I immediately met Moussa at his bakery and then, after munching on a discus of bread fresh from the oven, I headed to the school to throw myself into what I'm doing so I could remember why I'm here. I felt at home in a millisecond. No sooner had I dropped my bag on a dusty table when I was being made a large cup of tea and being shuffled over to the computers so Bola could show me how to type in Arabic. 

"See?" he said. "You put your hands like this," showing me a pattern of fingers-on-a-qwerty-pad that I've been more than familiar with since 6th grade. "You see the letter on the screen, and you type it here." 

I figured this was the time to wow them with my fancy American typing skills, so I switched the language to English, flew through the intermediate typing test, became the most popular person in the room for the next three minutes, turned to Bola and Ibrahim and said, "Yeah, I get the idea. Just not in Arabic." From that point on, life made sense again. Bola learned and remembered his animals in English like a pro, and Moussa FINALLY grasped the difference between "I am eating" and "I will be eat." Al-hamdulilah. Which came back to bite me when I arranged my word cards to form the sentence "The monkey wants to eat a mouse" and Moussa said, "NO. Monkey will not eat mouse, monkeys don't eat meat." Thank you, sir, for completely missing my grammatical point.  

But today was amazing. I had to steal myself before leaving the guesthouse for the next taxi encounter, but I arrived without a hitch and for only 10 pounds 50. Then later, although my English tutoring was somewhat discouraging, I was filmed for a Greek television piece that's being put together about Egypt after the revolution. They wanted to show the disparity between the different classes and expositing how life is in a place such as Manshiya. They were impressed with me - that I was there on a regular basis, that I was eating the food and not getting sick ("No seriously," Panos, the Greek director, asked, "what medications are you taking?"), that I was doing something to try to give the kids an opportunity to dream bigger and give them a chance. I shrugged, not real sure what to say. For the first time in my life, I didn't mind being in front of a camera. It didn't matter that the light was practically in my eyeballs, or that my hair was in disarray or that they were all up in our grill while I was helping Bola read his English book. I was just doing what I do here. And I didn't feel self-conscious at all. Even when I realized I'd probably just moved my bag into pigeon pee on the roof of Bola's house right before my interview. I didn't get nervous when they asked me questions, and I didn't hesitate when they miked me for the camera. I didn't even think twice about it. I was part of the reason they were on a roof in Manshiyet Nasr below the outfall of a vaulted pigeon coop. Panos wanted my take on the place, wanted me in one of the shots in the street, wanted me sitting with Bola and his dad and uncle and sisters in their living room. As he was telling the members of the camera crew to get out of the shot, I looked at him and asked, "Do I need to get out?" He said, "No. You're a part of the community."