Tell Him to Tell

A kitchen rant composed by Jessamy and me over dirty dishes and soap bubbles after our landlord called (and also sent the doorman) to tell us to turn down our music because his brother was sleeping.  It was 11:30 a.m. and our music was NOT that loud.  Certainly not as loud as Egypt, where the audio stimulation at any given point is about comparable to the inside of a funhouse at a seedy carnival.

 

Tell him to tell the ruba vecchia*

To stop shouting

There is enough old junk in the streets to fill a thousand odd shops!

 

Tell him to tell the children

To stop exploding sawarikh**

In which Holy Book does it say that Ramadan is the month of throwing rockets at people?

 

Tell him to tell the people

To stop shouting ALL THE TIME

EVEN WHEN THEY”RE NOT ANGRY!

 

Tell him to tell

The taxi drivers to tear out their horns

And use them as earplugs!

 

Tell him to tell the women

To put on their hegabs***

And LOOK for Mahmoud****!

 

Better yet, tell him to tell

The women to TAKE OFF their hegabs

And surely Mahmoud will come to THEM!

 

Tell him to tell his country

That if people were quiet at night

Then they wouldn’t have to sleep in the middle of the day!

 

* “Ruba vecchia” (Stolen from the Italian “old things”) is a man who wanders the streets with a cart collecting old things that people don’t want to be sold in the antiques district.  In order to be a “ruba vecchia,” the only requirement is that you are able to shout “vecchia” over and over again, an average of 7,000 times a day, while imitating a goat with laryngitis. 

**”Sawarikh” are the rockets/firecrackers that the boys throw constantly during Ramadan.  Remember the Vagina Rocket poem.  Apparently, they are also thrown at Christmas and New Year’s.  I am told that it is well I am leaving Egypt just before this, because in addition to throwing sawarikh, they also apparently throw random things out their windows onto the unsuspecting passerbys on the sidewalk below.  My friend swears her uncle once threw a toilet out of his 8^th story window.  

***”Hegabs” are the headscarves the women don before going out.

**** Mahmoud was the name of the doorman at our apartment complex.  The women, unwilling to go step outside in search of him when they needed something, could be heard shouting his name out their windows , again, an average of 7,000 times a day.  Mahmoud has recently disappeared into the great mystery that is Alexandria and was replaced by a considerably less-smiley doorman whose name has not yet been discovered by the women and so they are, for the moment, unable to summon him from their windows alhamdulillah (Praise God)!