There is a palm print on our ceiling

There is a palm print on our ceiling.

Really, it’s there in the middle of the kitchen ceiling.

Before I start about the palm, I believe an explanation is overdue. You might have guessed already from previous posts (or conversations!) that I am on holiday. I am in Egypt on holiday, and I’m finding it a little bit unsteady, but more about that later, no doubt.

So back to the palm, the first interesting thing is that I noticed it in the first place. I don’t usually walk around inspecting ceilings, especially not in the kitchen. It’s not a room where I’m likely to have a lie down. Usually I’m peering inside the fridge looking for something to eat. Although all I keep finding today are some cakes, and I don’t like cake, so I stick to bread sticks. They have these great crispy bread sticks with sesame seeds on top.

Anyway, I digress, getting back to the palm print on the ceiling. It’s a fully formed print of a perfectly average palm. I’m guessing it belongs to the guy who installed our natural gas. This brings me to a great aspect about this country, and I use the word great because at this point I’m trying not to use too many negative words. Everybody thinks they are right and nothing else could possibly matter. When this guy installed our gas, he did a good job. We have natural gas and it works. Of course in the process he broke a multitude of the tiles my dad had so painstakingly picked. He forcibly rearranged our kitchen so it’s quite uncomfortable to use now. He installed a huge ugly looking meter on the wall, and wrote a phone number on it by hand. He connected a pipe through our living room, with a gapping hole around it, just above my dad’s antique mirror. This hole is about six times as big as it needs to be and is surrounded by white mortar that stands out so much it’s extremely difficult to ignore. Then there is the mess they left in the bathroom.

That pretty much describes everything else. There are holes everywhere. All of them too big for what they do and all of them surrounded by abstract formations of grey cement that stands out against walls. There are too many air conditioners hanging out of people’s walls. All of them dripping water on the street… on people’s heads... but that doesn’t matter; you shouldn’t be walking on the street anyway.

And another thing, how long does it take to install a dish on a roof? They’ve been welding, really loudly for the past three hours. It’s loud and it’s annoying, but no one cares. No one is complaining. I don’t think anyone has even noticed. People are so used to being abused that they don’t even register anymore. Pedestrians on the street accept that cars always have the right of way. Walking is not something people do and if you dare try to cross a street, then God help you.

The truth is this is a great country. It has so much to offer, but people don’t care for each other. Or they do but in other less visible ways. They don’t bother to be considerate of each other, even when being considerate is someone else’s right.

Then again, maybe I belong here more than I think… I’ve just rambled on about how I’m right and they’re all wrong. Isn’t that a very Egyptian thing to do?