This post deals with some, uh, indelicate issues.
If you don’t want to read it, don’t.
Category: WTF
I am going to try to do this justice, but it was a surreal visual thing, so I am not optmistic. But here goes.
At the end of the first day in Marrakech, we retired to our hotel. There was a TeeVee in the room. As i almost always do in hotel rooms, I turn on the TeeVee to see what is on.
There were about half a dozen channels. Some in French, some in Arabic, one in German and one in English.
On what appeared to be an all-news arabic channel was a scene that I shall not soon forget.
In the center of the scene, in a fairly tight shot, a man was standing in a white, hooded robe, referred to as a gallabeya in these parts. He looked vaguely familiar. Turns out he is the King of Morocco and I had seen his photo everywhere.
Off to the side of him where several gentlemen wearing military uniforms and a few men in standard western suits.
From off camera-left came men. They were mostly middle aged and older. They all wore a white gallabeyas, with a fez and the hood pulled over the fez.
They approached the King. The king held out his hand. The man would take his hand and kiss it.
Or rather, attempt to kiss it.
Here is where it got weird.
The king, however, decided how much kingly hand loving they got. He would, rather abruptly, pull away his hand which often resulted in the kisser smacking himself in the face with his now empty hand! Doh!
The king allowed 4 levels of kingly hand loving. There must have been some ranking and favoritism to this. The 4 levels, in ascending order of lip-to-hand contact time:
- No actual lip contact. The king allowed his hand to be clasped and then would YANK it back before it could be kissed. (Heretofore referred to as the King Yank or K.Y.) Smack!
- Kissing the back of the hand followed by K.Y. Smack!
- Kissing the back of the hand, then turning it over to kiss the palm followed by K.Y. Smack!
- Kissing the back of the hand, turning it over to kiss the palm, then turning it back to kiss the back again. K.Y. Smack!
There were 2 outlyers in this group:
- A very small handful (heh) of men got the full multi-sided hand loving and got a few words from the King. They must have been very special individuals
- One or two did the whole front-back-front kiss and then proceeded up the King’s arm kissing as they went. This seemed to really annoy the King.
This procession went on for about 15 minutes. There must have been over a 200 people in this line. The entire time a very solemn voice proclaimed, what I assume to be, the names of the kissers.
We were there during a national holiday, a day where the King attends the mausoleum where his ancestors are entombed. I assume that these men were ministers of parliment, or otherwise leaders in the country and this was a ritual profession of loyalty to the king.
Kaddee and I laid in bed watching this with slack jaws. It was like a bad train wreck, you didn’t want to watch it, but you could help yourself.
The entire time I watched it I thought: The Daily Show would get a kick out of this.
I have looked for video of it, but I can find none.
Anyway…
Categories
Can you imagine?
6 October is a big national holiday in Egypt. It celebrates the victory of Egypt over Israel in reclaiming the Sinai.
There really isn’t anything equivalent in the US.
It isn’t as big as say, July 4th, but it is certainly bigger than V-E day or Veterans day or anything like that.
So, this year October 6th is on a Friday, which is a day off anyway.
It is also Ramadan.
So on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1st(!), the Egyptian government decided
“Oh what the hell. It is Ramadan, nothing is getting done anyway, lets give everybody October 5th off as well for a long weekend”
Can you imagine that happening in the US?
I mean the US plays games with holidays to make long weekends all the time, but it is not done 4 days before the holiday!
So classes are cancelled, government offices, banks, etc will be closed.
The reality is that it won’t have a large impact because we are in the middle of Ramadan anyway, and most places already have irregular and abbreviated hours as it is..
Categories
Small money…
“Mafiish fakka” = “I have no change”
Nobody here has change.
Giving anything as “large” as a 20 pound note (for, say, an LE8 purchase) brings the question, “fiih fakka”. (Do you have change?)
When answered in the negative, there is much sighing and eye-rollling.
Today I wanted to buy a small bottle of water. LE1.25. All I had was a 10LE note. The cashier asked if I had change. I did not. Much sighing. At the table next to him was a guy who obviously collects the cash and stocks the cash register. He had piles of bills. I pointed at him and said, “go get change”.
He went over and there was much gesticulating and talking and (seemingly) arguing. The cashier came back.
He gave me LE8.75 change. All in 50piaster notes (1/2 pound). I could SEE the 1 pound notes sitting on the table. But nooooo….
The other oddity (to me) is that there are NO coins. None.
The pound is divided into piastres. I have seen:
- 50 piaster notes
- 25 piaster notes
- 10 piaster notes (which are very colorful and cheaply made. I swear they look like play money).
All the cash registers will ring up the “actual” purchase price. Say, LE8.78. If you give the cashier LE10, if you are lucky, you’ll get LE1.25 back. More likely you will get LE1.20, and more likely still, LE1.
It is the first (non-US) country I have been in that doesn’t have coins for the “change”, let alone coins for the small denominations (LE1, LE5 etc).
And there does not appear to be any official “retiring” of money. It keeps getting circulated until it falls apart. You will often get bills taped together, sometimes with multiple pieces of tape.
Some merchants will refuse to take money that is “too” torn. The idea is to keep the “good” notes and give out the torn ones.
What a country.
Categories
Mafiish Ma!assh
(That is as close as I can come to the phonetic spelling. The “!” is a glottal stop.)
If you ever move to Egypt, bring passport style photos with you.
Lots of them.
We had 6 taken, each. Those were gone by the 2nd day.
We went to a photo shop to have more taken and the minimum number that they would sell you was 24 photos.
We thought that was an insane amount of pictures. “Why would you need that many”. After being here a week (wow, 7 days…) we realize “ya know, 24 photos probably would have been a good idea”
Anyway, we were at the bank opening an account for Kaddee’s salary deposit and getting ATM cards. They require a passport photo. We had a block of six. They were in a square and needed to be cut apart. We asked for a scissors.
“fii ma!assh?” (“Is there scissors?”)
“Mafiish ma!assh” was the response. “There are no scissors”.
I wasn’t sure I was understood or that I understood the response.
“Mafiish ma!assh?”
“Mafiish ma!assh”.
There are no scissors.
I showed the nice lady the photos and she said “ah, ok give to me”
I figured, “ok, they don’t give out the scissors she will cut one out of the block for me”
No. She took the block of photos and very slooowly and carefully tore one photo from the block and then did the same with Kaddee’s photo.
I should have offered to go around the corner to the guy selling the handguns. I think I saw a pair of scissors in the pile..
Categories
Not in Kansas anymore Toto.
Stuff like this is the reason my little point and shoot canon lives in a pouch on my belt.
The guy was selling misc “stuff”, sitting on a street corner near Midaan Tahrir (Independence Square). One of the busiest places in Cairo. Across the square from the big Egyptian History Museum, Nile Hilton and other upscale tourist hotels and about a 2 blocks from AUC.