Urban Warfare

Well, I’d been concerned these blog postings had been getting a bit banal, but this week we have some real excitement in the form of ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADES. Ironically, although I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to distinguish between gunshots and fireworks (the popping sounds are usually fireworks), when I was awoken by two huge booms at 4:30 a.m., I told myself it was nothing and just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Wrong again. Good thing I’m not a war reporter. Turns out a couple of over-armed black-masked men decided to try to take out a TV satellite dish; the main satellite field is located uncomfortably close to our house. A couple of days later, video of the attack surfaced on the Internet. The guys behind it were members of a Syrian group with ties to Al Qaeda. Fantastic.

The assault on the satellite dish was the topper to the October 6 holiday, Armed Forces Day. There were festivities throughout the country. Needless to say, the MB thought the day presented a terrific opportunity to once again make their point that they are waiting for their democratically elected leader Mohammed Morsi to resume his rightful place at the helm of the Egyptian state. By the end of the day, more than 50 were dead and hundreds had been injured.

Also on the urban warfare front: we have defeated the army of ants that had invaded our home. O came from New York armed with heavy artillery in the form of massive doses of ant poison. The traps proved fairly useless, but the poisoned gel that we piped into their lair did the trick. We can now leave food out in the open for more than 10 seconds without an ant assault. There are still a few stragglers, but we have at least temporarily defeated the occupying forces.

O also brought with him a basketball hoop for T’s birthday. It was the one thing T told me he really wanted our house in Cairo to have, and he’s thrilled now that it’s here. He and X go out and shoot hoops nearly every day. And since there still isn’t a ton to do IN the house, it’s a relief that they have something to do outside.

On the household front: The couch is due to be delivered any day now. I can’t wait. The carpenter stopped by yesterday and said he had finished building the loft beds and now they just needed to be stained. He had come to the house with swatches so the kids could choose fabric for their desk chairs. The choices were pretty limited but they both opted for a funky 60s-style graphic black-and-white print with bright orange and red accents. Quite cute.

Finally, I realized I’d never closed the chapter on the shocking dishwasher. It’s still electrifying—apparently that’s just par for the course here, where nothing is grounded. But supposedly the previous tenants, who worked for a big oil company had an electrician who did ground the appliances, and there was some sort of extra wire that nasty Zanussi guy didn’t know how to deal with. So he attached it to the sink, and hence the jolting water. The electrician came and took care of that, but the dishwasher still zaps us. There’s a switch on the wall that cuts power to it, and he told me to just turn it off between cycles, which we now do. The one time I forgot, I got a little shock again. But now my laptop zings me as well, so I’ve decided to learn to live with it. Maybe all the extra electricity will be like getting hit by lightning and I’ll develop some sort of superpower.

Related articles

• Militants launch Egypt attacks after deadly clashes (sbs.com.au)