Water

There are many pleasures of being an expat, but sometimes there are trying times…

 It is the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and you are thirsty. You make the unhappy discovery that your water isn't working.

You do live in Cairo after all, a city in a desert. You have just watered all your plants*, whose insatiable thirst you had nobly put before your own, and done a vast amount of laundry, so it is perhaps understandable that your water supply gave up on you. This has happened before however, and the water has come back on after a short while, ready for you to boil and make palatable by the large quantity of tea you have leftover from China. You are optimistic that if you have a nap, your water will come back on by the time you wake up again. 

It doesn’t.

Your mouth is now dry. You go into the kitchen and desperately hunt for any liquid producing items. A small amount of tea drips from the thermos into a waiting cup, and you hoover up the contents instantly. 

Not enough. 

You remember you had meticulously peeled a pomegranate the day before, and open the fridge to find the bowl full of the tiny red seeds. You cram as much of this red treasure into your mouth as you can. It bursts in citrus, sour astringency and surprising juiciness. This is heaven. You have two more handfuls. 

Your thirst is a little better, but you know you need to venture outside and get some bottled water. You turn a tap on hopefully…nothing. Sighing, you start to make yourself presentable for outside. This is not as simple as going to your local shop in the UK. The sleeveless top and skirt you had been pottering about the flat in will not be suitable for a stroll outside in a quiet neighbourhood in a muslim city, where the dress code is as such; modest. The importance of this greatly depends on where you are in Cairo, and, sadly, if you are with a man. More on this in another post. 

Finding suitable attire is made more difficult as this is laundry day, and so you put on a strange assortment of clothes that you have left: white patterned jeans and a patterned t-shirt. You realise the t-shirt is a little short and will make you feel a bit self conscious, which could be dehydrated paranoia. You take a damp but long cardigan off the washing line and then, hurray, you are presentable.

….until you look in the mirror. Your hair, which when you left the UK, was neat and pixie like, is now fast approaching wizard status. It has a life of it’s own and left in the heat and house all day it is defying gravity. You cannot have a shower. There is still no life to the taps. Sighing again you resign yourself to the facf you’re going to look like a bonkers agnabi** you wrap a (blue and red, adding to the interesting clothes scheme) scarf around your head a la 50’s housewife, glasses too.

You’re outside, and feeling shaky due to lack of water. It’s Islamic New Year, a public holiday so you’re not sure your closest shop will be open. You may need to go the further away small kiosk where the guy isn’t as friendly and stares down your attempts of Arabic. You head in the nearer shop direction just in case and, can see light, and people with bags nearby. You can see the doorway now and smile with relief as you see the familiar face of the owner, who is lovely and always repeats how much your things are in Arabic until you understand with a big smile and humour in his eyes. 

YOU HAVE WATER.

You make your way slowly back up the six flights of stairs to your flat, the water weighing you down. You ponder on how you always seem to end up on the top floor of places where there’s no lift. In China it was the 5th floor that was the top, and here the sixth floor is always that little more effort. You get in, collapse on a chair and tear open one of the bottles. Sweet, sweet relief.

As you sit, making impressive indents into one of the 1.5 litre bottles you bought,  there is a loud gurgling coming from the pipes. You stop. With lowered brows you shuffle into the bathroom. You try a tap.

The water is back on.

*My roof terrace has a lot of plants, and it takes 14 bottles of water (I knew there was a reason why I didn’t throw away all those 1.5 litre bottles) to water them all.

** agnabi = westerner in Egyptian dialect.