Putting the "Far" in "Faraowla"
So last night, I went to watch the Brazil-France match at the cafe in front of the Umm Kalthoum hotel in Zamalek. During the World Cup, they've set up a whole sidewalk cafe with tv's etc, so it's a really nice atmosphere, especially in the evening when there's a cool breeze coming in off the Nile. (They've put in a huge new Cilantro next door as well, so there's a nice stretch of sidewalk cafe action going on now, just in time for the summer. It's all very Euro-posh.)
So there I am, sipping a nice, cool strawberry juice with some friends when something suddenly drops out of the sky onto our glass table with a solid THUD, bounces onto my lap for a moment and then slowly slides to the ground.
As I glanced down into my lap, I thought it was rock. A rather large, dark grey rock. Looking up, it wasn't clear where such a thing could have come from, seeing as we were sitting under a huge canopy next to the entrance of the hotel. Did someone throw a rock out a window at us? Were we being targeted because we were the only western foreigners sitting in the busy cafe?
It was at approximately this moment that I noticed this rock had a tail. A rather long, skinny, dark grey tail. And when the woman at the next table jumped out of her chair shrieking, I knew that this was no rock, but rather, a *rat* that had mysteriously fallen out of the sky and nearly nose-dived into my fresh strawberry juice.
I'm not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, but I found it hard to do anything but laugh at the situation. Only in Cairo could you sit in a relatively posh outdoor cafe enjoying a pleasant evening and have a rat hurl itself from several stories high into your lap, prompting you to say to your waiter: "Lo samaHt, mumkin a3Seer faraowla taani, a3shan kan fi far fi da" or "Excuse me, could I please have another strawberry juice because there was a rat in this one?"
So there I am, sipping a nice, cool strawberry juice with some friends when something suddenly drops out of the sky onto our glass table with a solid THUD, bounces onto my lap for a moment and then slowly slides to the ground.
As I glanced down into my lap, I thought it was rock. A rather large, dark grey rock. Looking up, it wasn't clear where such a thing could have come from, seeing as we were sitting under a huge canopy next to the entrance of the hotel. Did someone throw a rock out a window at us? Were we being targeted because we were the only western foreigners sitting in the busy cafe?
It was at approximately this moment that I noticed this rock had a tail. A rather long, skinny, dark grey tail. And when the woman at the next table jumped out of her chair shrieking, I knew that this was no rock, but rather, a *rat* that had mysteriously fallen out of the sky and nearly nose-dived into my fresh strawberry juice.
I'm not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, but I found it hard to do anything but laugh at the situation. Only in Cairo could you sit in a relatively posh outdoor cafe enjoying a pleasant evening and have a rat hurl itself from several stories high into your lap, prompting you to say to your waiter: "Lo samaHt, mumkin a3Seer faraowla taani, a3shan kan fi far fi da" or "Excuse me, could I please have another strawberry juice because there was a rat in this one?"
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