Cassie's story - Letters To Myself

Hi guys, here it is, Monday again. It’s been a busy week for me, with moving to a new apartment, and then travelling to the UK. Here it is around 20C cooler, but has been sunny at least. Today however is overcast with occasional showers, very different to the unchanging weather of Hughada. My allergies are kicking in with relish – all this grass and pollen is making the membranes in my sinus’ swell in protest. My eyes are itching, my nose is running and my throat is itchy. And that is with taking antihistamines. But in a couple of weeks it will settle down somewhat. Nothing is perfect is it? I love the grass and the flowers, but I’m highly allergic to grass, can’t walk on it in bare feet or sit on it, and the pollen is attacking my body with what feels like single minded determination.

Well, since it’s Monday it’s not about me, it’s about Cassie, and today, Saffron, who has been enjoying the alcoholic choices at the restaurant with reckless disregard for the next day.

I studied the flushed cheeks and glassy eyes of Saffron with concern. I had tried with the bread starters and a pasta main to help her soak up the alcohol but it did not seem to have had much of an effect. Saffron had knocked back her cocktail, insisted I finish mine and then proceeded to drink most of our bottle of wine. Now, despite the physical evidence of inebriation, she was studying the dessert menu with what seemed to be a steady hand and eyes that could still decipher the printed word – in fact she seemed to be steadier than I was. I had no head for alcohol, especially spirits, and drinking two cocktails plus the wine had caused a decided shift in my centre of gravity.

Leaning over the table Saffron pointed to something called Hot Chocolate Marshmallow Cake. “That looks amazing don’t you think?”

I read the description – hot chocolate mud cake drizzled with marshmallow and topped with cream, ice-cream and chocolate sauce. “It looks rich and sweet, and must have a bazillion calories. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Her flushed cheeks became even more rosy as Saffron glared at me. “Yes I do. Who am I trying to look good for anyway? A husband who’s never home? Bah, I want chocolate and I shall have it. What about you Cassie, chocolate too?”

I shook my head, I was feeling light headed and was sure a rich dessert would curdle in my alcohol soaked stomach. “No, I like the look of the strawberry cheesecake.”

“That’s boring Cassie, you should try something different. If you want strawberries why don’t you have this? It’s a strawberry meringue cake.”

I looked at the menu. It did sound nice, and was probably lighter than cheesecake. “OK, I’ll get that.”

Saffron waved at the waiter and called out, “Yoohoo! Cute waiter guy! Yes you! Can we order dessert please?”

I cringed back in my chair as heads turned to look at us. Hoping that none of tonight’s patrons were customers at the coffee van I tried to disappear behind my menu as the waiter approached, a huge grin on his face. I watched as Saffron flirted with him, batting her eyes and pushing out her generous bust. He seemed to love the attention, I hoped he wasn’t going to try to get her phone number.

I groaned inwardly when she added another bottle of wine to the order but didn’t say anything until the waiter had hurried away. “Are you sure we should have another bottle Saffie? It would be nice to have coffee to finish off the night.”

Saffron narrowed her eyes at me, which given their glassy state gave her an expression akin to a serial murderer. “What gives Cassie? You’re being a spoil sport tonight. We don’t have to work tomorrow so it doesn’t matter if you have a bit of a hangover. How often do either of us have a blowout?”

“Well, not very often that’s true.”

“So come on Cassie, let’s relax and forget about everything, just for a few hours.”

I studied her for a long moment. How long had it been since I enjoyed a night out without worrying about consequences? Since I married Nathan, never – it didn’t pay to drink too much with him, I had always had to stay alert and aware. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much of a habit it had become. Dinner with Matt was probably the closest I had come to forgetting myself.

Perhaps it was the alcohol already consumed, but I heard myself saying, “You’re right Saffie, it will do us both good to relax and enjoy ourselves.”

Saffron beamed at me, then turned to the waiter who had chosen that moment to return with the fresh wine bottle. “Did you hear that cute waiter? We are going to have fun tonight!”

He smiled at her, his gaze lingering a little too long on her cleavage, which was displayed to advantage in her low cut top. However his response was proper waiter talk. “That’s good news madam, I hope you both have a good night.” He poured the wine into two fresh glasses and left to attend to some other people.

Saffron’s gaze followed him across the room. “He’s very cute isn’t he? I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”

Oh dear. “Here comes dessert Saffie, we had better eat that before we drink any more or the wine is going to taste horrid after all that sugar.”

Fortunately she was distracted by dessert and seemed to lose interest in the waiter. We finished our delicious treat before starting our wine, and while it felt odd to be drinking wine instead of coffee or a liqueur after dessert, I decided to just go with it.  

 “You know you’re my besht friend ever don’t you Cassie.”

Saffron came around the table and enveloped me in a perfumed hug. She hugged me so hard I was in danger of asphyxiation by cleavage, but I was touched by the gesture.

“You too Saffie, I don’t know where I would be now without you.” Overwhelmed by this moment, surely a moment I would remember forever I felt emotional tears spring, and wiped my eyes on the edge of her top before extricating myself.

“We are invinshable together Cassie, invinshable!”

I nodded, I agreed completely. “We are invinsh, invinsha, invish – amazing together!” My tongue seemed to be having trouble forming certain words, probably because the wine in this new bottle was so icy cold.

Saffron beamed at me, her smile seeming to spread out across her entire face. I squinted, no, it was right where it normally was. That was reassuring. Her gaze switched to the side of the room. “Cassie, look! They have a DJ! We can dance!” She watched, entranced, as the preparations were made to change the restaurant to a night club. No, that couldn’t be right. Surely there would be people coming in wanting dinner. I studied my watch with more intensity than I usually needed because the numbers seemed to swirl around before settling into their accustomed positions.

“Saffie, it’s 2 am! How did it get so late? Didn’t we only have one bottle of wine after dessert?”

Saffron glanced at me and shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe more than one.” As the music started she jumped up, stumbled and sat down abruptly, stood up again and swung around to pull me to my feet. “Come on, let’s dance!”

I looked at the dance floor, the dim lights, the people already dancing, and threw what was left of my caution to the winds. Picking up my glass I drained it before following her onto the dance floor. I was having fun, who cared about tomorrow? 

Letters To Myself

Living in Egypt, why I like it

Tomorrow I will be traveling, leaving Egypt for some months for a variety of reasons. It may seem odd to you, to choose to live in this country instead of my own. So, after almost a year and a half, I’m going to give you my impressions of life here. This is only my own view – every person who comes to this country (indeed any country) will have experienced a different Egypt. If I may digress just a tad, Australia is a huge country so the tourist who goes to the bottom end, to Sydney or Melbourne or even further south to Tasmania, is going to go home with stories so different to those of the ones who go instead to the top end, or the dry centre, that it would seem they all went to different countries. So it is with Egypt. The person who lives in Cairo, Alexandria or Luxor is going to tell tales of a different Egypt to my own experiences here in Hurghada. And here, the lifestyle differs depending on where you live and how much money you have – that’s common everywhere of course.

So, my life here and why I’m coming back. First of course is the cheaper cost of living for an expat. The exchange rate is favourable even now when the Australian dollar is reflecting its government and failing. So I can live relatively comfortably on far less than I could in Australia. This means more cash available for traveling and I am geographically closer to all the places I want to travel to. These are practical reasons why I will come back. Another practical reason is that my problems with allergies, caused mostly by pollen and moisture, are almost non-existent living in the desert.

While there is an active expat community (I believe), as an introvert I am happier to be mostly on my own, with only one or two friends. I can do that here without having family worrying that I am about to become a hermit (I always was). Because I am not stressed with trying to be more social, and I am no longer dealing with the fallout from my personal life collapse (this is somewhat of an understatement to cover the last few years, but those years are now firmly in the past) I have tapped into my creativity in a way that was impossible before. I have story ideas, novel ideas, drawing ideas, painting ideas that would never have found a fertile place to become anything more than a fleeting thought in my old life. I am fulfilled because I am doing the things that make me feel alive.

This country has many problems, and I have no idea how they can be resolved. I don’t know what the future will bring for Egypt, for the Middle East or the rest of the world. This blog is not about that. This is about what it is like to live here, in Hurghada, as an average person. Egypt has many faces, every country does. You cannot understand another country unless you live in it for several months, and even then you will have only a limited comprehension of its people, culture and way of life. This is especially true for a country that has a culture so very different to your own. So while I have been here for over a year, and I understand the culture more than I did when I came, I still have much to learn.

There are frustrations and irritations involved with living here of course. Expats (and locals) complain every day. I do too – bukra (tomorrow) has become a word I hate to hear. Bukra never comes, especially, as one friend who has lived here many years reminded me, if it is followed by insha’Allah. Egyptians do not like to say no, so they say this morning, this afternoon, tomorrow. You have to read between the lines to understand whether they actually mean that or if they are saying no. Of course you also have to deal with Egypt time, so even when they mean tomorrow, it may not be the day after today tomorrow, but one day next week tomorrow – or tomorrow in a month’s time. Conversations are circular, nobody gets straight to the point, and that’s frustrating too when you’re used to being more direct.

You have to be careful to wash vegetables thoroughly, you can’t drink the water from the tap and you have to be careful which bottled water you buy (and you don’t know that when you’re a tourist, but some companies simply fill up the bottles from the tap). Road surfaces are dodgy at best, unpaved and pothole ridden at worst. Building projects spring up overnight and building supplies are dumped in the street. I have become so used to this that I no longer even comment when I am walking a road I have walked many times before, and am confronted with a huge pile of sand or stone. I just climb over it like everyone else does. There is no workplace health and safety, workers balance precariously on air conditioning units five stories up, or walk about on wooden beams wearing sandals. When you walk past a building under construction you must look up, as items ranging from hammers to metal poles are dropped with little regard for anyone underneath.

There is noise, dust, shouting in the streets, unscrupulous taxi drivers, thieves, conmen. A group of men will come together in an argument that sounds like someone is about to die, and then it all breaks up with no apparent hard feelings. There is constant beeping from the cars and trucks on the road, a kind of ongoing conversation. Shop keepers sit outside their souvenir stores and try to lure you in, the better to cheat you out of as much cash as they think they can. So the more you look like a wide eyed tourist, and the more expensive your clothes look, the more expensive will be the items they are keen to sell you. They will also be far more likely to offer you tea and a place to sit if they think you are both naive and wealthy. But take heart, those of you who are reading this and realizing that the friendly man who was so nice to you and gave you tea also took you for more than you needed to pay – if you considered it a reasonable price then it was, and he got a bit more desperately needed cash to live on. Also the man who befriended you in your resort and offered to take you shopping so you were not ripped off – he gets a commission from the stores he took you to, and you were still ripped off. But you helped not only the shop keeper but the friendly man, and you got a tour guide so in effect you paid him for his time. And he is also a poor man in need of money. In every country in the world the tourist is seen as a walking wallet, and Egypt is no different.

So why do I like it? The noise, the confusion, the chaos, it may be frustrating but it is also brilliantly alive. The people are poor yes, but they embrace life, they live in the present and leave the future to God. They find humour in the worst of situations, they find hope where you would think none exists. They can laugh at themselves as quickly as they can take offense with each other. Life here is never boring, never dull.

When I first came I missed things that I had taken for granted my whole life; living in a house as opposed to an apartment, having a back yard to go out into, having green spaces to walk in, having grass everywhere, rain, flowers, gardens, a lack of litter. It took time for my eyes to see what is here instead. Here there is the fiery sunrise over the Red Sea, every single morning is a painters palette of shades of orange and red, even the Red Sea lives up to its name at sunrise. The call to prayer that floats over the town, a sound that is still exotic to me as well as being a useful way to keep track of the time. I no longer need to worry about finding a parking space, I walk everywhere or take a taxi, and never have to wait longer than a minute or two for a taxi. Of course it can be a lottery as to whether the driver is going to try to take advantage of me being obviously foreign, and sometimes they seem to be hell bent on taking me to heaven earlier than I anticipated, but there are ways around that. If you are a woman alone it is best to use a reputable taxi service or call a driver recommended to you. But I digress.

The desert – at first I dismissed the desert, wondering why people from beautiful countries such as Austria, Switzerland and Germany, would prefer the arid sameness of the desert. But it grows on you. The desert is timeless, peaceful, beautiful. When I come back I will be choosing an apartment that faces the desert instead of the sea.

There is a freedom to living here, a lack of the restrictions of western society. Here, I can focus on what is important in life and forget about the rest. Who cares if I haven’t had a haircut in three years? Who cares if my skirt is three seasons old? Does it matter if my shoes are not that attractive so long as they keep out the sharp stones and the dust? What matters is that I am dressed, clean, and have a roof over my head and food in the fridge. Everything else is western programming intended to make you spend money on things that do not matter.

The food: there is so much food that I love and will miss. So much that the next blog post is going to be all about the food I like, since this one is already too long and I’m only hoping that you are still reading! So, the next blog will be about the food, and the one following about the street cats, another reason I will be coming back. I will try to get them done and up over the next week, not forgetting Cassie on Monday. So keep checking, or better yet subscribe to the blog!