up?

cairo. 11 days and counting. arabic. 5 words 2 sentences 3 fragments and counting. love. on it's way to massachusetts. body. 24 years 52,214 ice cream scoops 17 sexual fantasies 19 food/sex fantasies one cracked skull fragmented rib torn ligament and counting. friends and lovers. 8000 miles and counting away. mind. straining to come up with nothing. heat. poring through my skin. tears. i'm not sweating. africa. a place on the map and a blemish on your ass. palestine. birthmark of a birthright to the holy land. plan. was there ever one. and is it any wonder. reason has left this house. teach me madness.

Disclaimer: tabby in egypt.

i am currently on hiatus from eritrea and life in general, living the farce of an expat life and ostensibly studying arabic in cairo. as such, this blog has taken a sharp turn from pseudo deathly serious crap spewing from the disoriented mind of a pakistani cum american living in rural eritrea, and taken on the air of an escapist westerner partying it up in the third world. please excuse my excesses.

surreal night in egypt #1

--thursday august 12--

start by listening to the muslim call to prayer funkifed and sultrified by a group of western-suited arabs and view "chinese acrobatics" in the middle-aged citadel, a huge compound of mosques and palaces and other now-defunct buildings that once housed all of egypt's rulers.

move on to a standard cairo-night-out at a sheesha bar and then to a danceclub featuring an egyptian band playing the finest music i've heard since first opening a copy of jesus + mary chain's "psychocandy," this may be a slight exagerration. but only slight. as the night wears on the band leaves and the music devolves into a mix of arabic and western pop with the occasional bloated long-guitar-soloed rock song accompanied by the crowd's hips moving, arms double-pumping and chemically-induced love blooming.

don't settle for second best, put your groove to the test and opt not to go to bed at 4:00am, but to watch the sunrise over the great pyramids at giza. have it out with the a tour guide here and a tourism police officer there, climb onto a roof, rip your clothes, fall asleep on a bench to wake just before sunrise and watch the brooding black silhouettes turn into enormous golden triangles. now start a cult.

another place another time.
xox
tabby

no parece eritrean

hola. estoy in cairo. i am supposed to be learning arabic, pero hablo espanol mejor que hablo arabiyya. pues....go with what you know, right?

or maybe not right. but i just got here. so give me a break. haven't done shit but sleep since my arrival last night. i was well worn after the 28 hour trip in which i yet again lost some of my luggage. my one big bag; hopefully it's found soon. have a feeling the check-in lady deliberately sabotaged its destination, it was kind of a role reversal, i was asking her more questions than she was asking me. about european baggage regulations. she might've thought, to hell with it, you won't even have to worry about checking your bag in at paris, you know why? cause you won't have one....you've been hit by, you've been hit by. a smooth criminal. god damn, only now do i realize the gravity of those words, sung by michael jackson 15 odd years ago. kinda gross when you think about it....

classes start tomorrow. i'm not sure what time. i'll just show up early.

a fellow student at the hotel was complaining about her room. i was like, whatchyu talkin bout, we got AC up in here!! shit.

international language institute's (ILI's) managing director's first words to me: you don't look eritrean.

me: i'm not.

talk about auspicious beginnings. can't wait to see how it pans out.