I've been entertaining myself rather delightfully with doses of Austen - I've always meant to be well-er-read (:P) than I am, instead of accidentally pretending to wit and intellect. I've been something of a Jack-of-all-books (master of none) - I know very well what I ought to have read (and recommend very readily to other people what I haven't read myself) but there is much reading of people dead and wise, yet to be done.

Ironically, that makes me rather like Emma (if you've read it, you will know ^_^).

I forgot how old I was going to be next birthday, and then I forgot how old I was. Ironically, I will be 23 next birthday. XD (nobody likes you when you're 23 XD)

It's either rather late or very early, depending on how you look at it. XD

School's started again, but MY MAMA IS HERE ALHAMDULILLAH. It's like she was always here, you know? Or, like I haven't not seen her for two and a half months (how is that even possible??) and nobody but Allah knows just how happy I am to be with her again. I don't think about her leaving if I can help it. Depressing.

Eid wasn't so bad. I was geared up for it to be the rubbishest Eid EVER, and although it was the first time we've been split up like this - there've been Eids when dad was in other places, but we've always been at home, with mum at least. So it was never going to be the same - but for all that, it wasn't the horrible depressing scene I'd half-constructed in my head. We slept half the day away, which is always a good way to start the day XD, and by the time I'd tumbled out of bed and lurched into the shower for my Eid-bath, it was already pretty lateish. I finally psyched myself into cooking at around half four, but it was sloooow.

Here is a picture of my food:





We had:

pilau rice (note how the onions only cover half of it since half of people like them not)
chicken korma (with potatoes)
fried chicken
fried potatoes
kebabs
chana (chick peas) with potatoes
salad
minty yoghurty dip
kheer (like creamed rice pudding stuff)
shape phithas!

and then it was finally ready but Heidi'd already gone to bed after a bad day, Shamim baya had left after being embarrassed at being asked why he was there if he wasn't going to eat, and I was generally feeling infected by the baddish atmosmood plus my 4/5-day-old headache was really killing me. Oh, the fun.

Me and Abdullah went to the airport to collect mum with Shamim baya, at like, four in the morning. The night before, dad was describing to me how mum'd be looking, and I was like, I think I'll recognise my own mum lol!!!! Knew it was her the moment I saw her.

My mama is here, my mama is here, my mama is here, my mama is here, my mama is here, my mama is here, my mama is here!

My mama is coming tomorrow inshallah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look how I split up one long post into three short not-so-long ones! So your eyes don't bleed!

It's too early *bleary* I couldn't sleep - the moshas 'squitoes were making a meal of me, and et my face TWICE and et up my arms and feet and everything. When I get bit, I go all hive-y and get these big-up raised patches of whiteness (I am brown) which are sehr itchy mitchy ouchy. So I got up and watched the sun rise instead. It rises fast! Mr. Schumacher said it takes 8 minutes for light to reach the Earth from the sun - that was in year 6 (he was my teacher). Our windows are full east. I watched birdies and kitties with my noboculars, too. My noboculars take pictures, but they're quite rubbishy quality.

Aww man, I've been woken up nearly every morning by them blarney flies crawling on my face!! I thought if I ignored them, I'd get used to it, but you reeeally don't get used to being walked on by flies. And they all come in the morning when you're like, aaaahhh naaaap *snore* and they ALL sit on ME. Nevermind both sisters being adjacent on either side, you know. Blarney flies.

I'm really behind replying to emails - sorry! It's because it's Ramadan and there's no time! But Ramadan is nearly over :( :( and Eid is nearly upon us, and soon we will be back at school, and I can devote some nights to writing to everyone. But really people, I can't write twenty million original emails :( you will all have to come here and read this instead. Yes? Yes. Okay.

I feel too tired to do anything special for Eid, even cooking. I'm understanding why Shamim baya (my cousin here) always sleeps for the three days of holiday. And the cleaning is really disheartening. I just want to sleep through Eid. And then sleep for another week, too. And I want internet at home *whine* I'm really tired of going to that blarney net cafe, where they redefine the concept of 'slow' and overcharge us because their silly computers are too rubbish to work. Oh for fast internet! At home! *complain*

It's so weird - all my life, I've been obsessed with reading - from cereal boxes at breakfast, to air-freshener cans in the toilet, to everything else you can imagine - I'm like the Hungry Caterpillar when I read. I plough through books like there's no tomorrow, and I've read so many that most of them become a blur in my mind. And yet, to my shame, I haven't read the Qur'an in translation, cover to cover. What a miserable failure. The trouble was that there were always other books - books that were easier to read, that seemed more, 'yay fun!' or something, and there were always so many - even to the point where I was leaving, I had, like sixty million library books at home - under the bed, under my desk, on my desk, on the windowsill, in mum's room - everywhere (you may laugh, Shaun, you may laugh XD). Of course (don't worry, John!), I had to give them all back before I came. Books are like, my staple diet - from bookerpillar, to working in a library, to working in a library and a bookshop...books, books, books, to paraphrase slightly rip off Katy (whose lifelong refrain was 'boys, boys, boys') XD

Anyhow (I'm sorry, I'm easily sidetracked)(I easily sidetrack myself, even), with all those other books to distract me, I never quite had the patience to read the Qur'an - you know how it is, the moment someone tells you to do something Islamic, people suddenly lose enthusiasm, despite being all jazzed up before (ain't that the way?). Mum and dad were always telling me - telling all of us - at least to read something Islamic, for god's sake, for x number of trashy books I read (this was after giving up on telling me not to read trashy books)(I am such a trial to my mama and papa O_o) but of course, being us, we didn't really change. Here, though - dad said straight off that no one was allowed to bring any trashy books (our luggage allowance was already crummy)(that wasn't the reason why, though), and that if we got bored, we would just have to read Qur'an. I balked a bit at first, but then I remembered that if I got desperate, I could download stuff off the internet XD XD

So yeah, mum and dad always turn out to be right, it just takes me a long time to get there. That's the trouble with kids and adults - mum and dad always know what they're talking about - clearly, they speak from experience; the trouble with people in general though, is that nobody likes secondhand experience. You also never quite learn a lesson so well unless you experience it yourself. And then! Then you're all, 'omg I know this, I know this!!' and you try to tell someone else and they shake you off, go and do dumb things, and then they're like, 'omg I know now O_O.' Tradeoffs, tradeoffs. Being a parent/similar must be like being Cassandra. Nobody listens.

Ack! 888 More digression! Sorry!

I know the Qur'an is amazing - it's a fact of life for me, just like the sky is blue, and things fall down. But I've never felt so close to it, or felt the perfection and wisdom of it more, and I realise I want to know it better, I want to be so familiar with it that I can think of an ayah and know where it is - knowing Harry Potter back to front and inside out is, in short, a waste of time and no use for my akhirah. If I knew Qur'an as well as I knew Harry Potter!! I'm feel really ashamed that there are books I know every detail about, and films that I can recite the script for, and yet I don't half that much about the Qur'an. Heh, some muslim. The trouble with books, too, is always that they finish too soon - I get to the end, and am like, 'you can't be finished! How can you be finished??!! Nuuuu please don't be finished!' and the thought briefly crossed my mind that what if the Qur'an finishes too soon and I want more and there isn't more? That would be too sad; it's not like there will be a sequel O_O But the Qur'an is long! It won't be finishing anytime soon! It'd take a lifetime and some to get right to the bottom of it, and even then, there would be more to it, because it is Kalaam-Allah.

So I think this year will be dedicated to improving my relationship with the Qur'an, inshallah. I said that to Tabs, and she was like, 'Affa, you're so DUMB!!! What do you think mum and dad have been SAYING forEVER?!!?!' 'cause I was all, 'WOW THASSO COOL,' about the whole thing. XD

It is early! This is the last day of Ramadan. :( It always goes so fast, just when you're really getting into it - I guess that is the wisdom in preparing for Ramadan before it starts. *makes note to self* It's been great being given time off school, if only for the last ten days...I have to say, I didn't even remotely meet my goal of going to the masjid every night (that'll make Heidi laugh XD)(I didn't go at all after Laila left XD). I was thinking lots about what Jasmine said last Ramadan, about developing a relationship with and attachment to the masjid; I wanted to try to build my own relationship with it, but...well, you can see the success of it.

However! All is not doom and gloom and the scent of failure! The main reason I opted to stay at home was to watch the taraweeh from Makkah: Makkah is always surreal, but in Ramadan, it is like, surreal squared (that's surreal x surreal for the mathematically-challenged XD). What most people - and masjids - try to do during Ramadan is to finish the Qur'an once completely through the taraweeh (that is a special extra Ramadan-prayer, which can be 8 or 20 rak'aat [units of prayer] long - for instance in Masjid Salaam [our one], they do 8, and in the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah, they do 20). The qur'an is divided into several kinds of sections, one of which is in thirtieths, and each thirtieth is called a 'juz' (part). So anyhow, they do a juz a night - 30 juz, 30 nights, et le fin! Good, innit?

Anyway! So yeah, they broadcast it live (on 4353905673 channels) and they subtitle it with the English translation and it's like, so cool. My favourite recitor is one of the Imams of the Ka'bah - Sa'ud ash-Shuraim - so it's like, coolness squared. XD Also, I really like Sudais and Abdullah al-Jehany who reminds me of one of our uncles (the family-friend kind of uncle :D) and we saw Saleh at-Talib's feet! You just don't expect people like that to have feet, you know? XD XD

So yeah, the point of all that was...it was like animating the qur'an - when you read a translation on your own, it's not the same as thinking of the translation as you hear - and see - it recited. 'Qur'an' means 'recital' - when it's words on a page, it doesn't have the same living, organic quality as when it's being recited by someone who really knows how to do it - it's like the difference between 2D and 3D, where the kitaab, the book, is the 2D representation of Kalaam-Allah (the word of God), and its qira'ah (recitation) is its 3D form - and its highest form, was the living, breathing 4D exposition of Muhammad (saw) - it's just how A'ishah (ra) described him.

Wow, subhanallah.

I am trawling Mr. Internet looking for a book called 'al kitaab fii ta'allum al-arabiyya' (Textbook for Arabic) by one Kristen Brustad. It is expensive. I want a cheapy one, I don't want DVDs, just grammar, lovely grammar, in ENGLISH, please God!

Okay, found one!

I just realised I don't need books with exercises and stuff - all I need is a book of fus'ha grammar. Ack. I need to hurry up and buy it so it gets sent home so baya can bring it when he comes, inshallah. But now I need to look for grammar book O_O

Arrrgh why can't it be simple? Just like Egyptians. In order to get from A to B, Egyptians will go via F, take a detour at P, u-turn at T, reverse back to H....etc, etc. They just don't know how to go from A...to B.

Now I need to email Dad and baya.

Also: Hello Elizabeth!! How are you?

And John, can you ask Jo (if she's back) if she's developed the photos yet? There should be two cams-worth, and I hope she got in people who couldn't come in on my last day. If it's not too much trouble, could you get her to pop the lot into the post, addressed to my house, so my brother can bring them when he comes? And I hope she had a good time in Australia!

Aww, I miss my job :(

Condoleezza Rice is in Egypt, wonder what she's doing here.

But then, she was just in Bangladesh, too. And London.

Hrm.

Yesterday I fell asleep while I was reading Qur'an, and about an hour or so later, I suddenly woke and bolted upright, saying, 'have we been to school yet today?' and everyone laughed. It was really strange – it was about half four and I really thought I'd woken up late for school, and had completely no recollection of actually going to school in the morning.

I think our phone sim has expired, or something. I miss-called baya (that is my big brother) from my normal phone yesterday just to, you know, remind them we're still here because they haven't called for days, and he texted back to say they'd tried calling a million times but couldn't get through. Come to think of it, nobody has called us for days – not Shamim baya, not our tutor (her name is Do'aa), not Laila…things began to make sense. XD

It is very early for me to be out – at this time I am normally in bed in these days of 10.40 classes. I really want my 8 o'clock class back.

Ooo the other day, our normal teacher, Samia, was ill, and we had a substitute – also called Samia. There are 3 Samias at Markaz Fajr – Samia Saghira or Qadeema (Small Samia/Old Samia), Samia Kabira and Samia Jadeeda – Big Samia and New Samia. It was very funny how she told us about how someone said the name, and everyone in the room would turn around. She was a really fun teacher – I learnt a couple of new grammar things (how to make certain masdar (gerund) forms) that I never knew before, which really must be a first so far, in all this time (not yet been taught any other grammar I didn't already know), and she spent a large part of the lesson telling us about how a woman in Russia liked to kidnap little girls and skin them, and store them in the freezer, and when they caught her, she had a leg, two arms, a head, and other various body bits, skinned and cleaned, stored away, and she was eating them. I was actually really horrified and spent most of the time she was talking about it covering my ears and wumbling so I wouldn't hear her. And then we started talking about Steve Irwin and how he played with timsahs crocodiles, and now he was dead.

I hope we get her for the next level; that would be fun.

John - There's only one Zakia Superman XD Of course it's her - do we not lead parallel lives? Except she is doing medicine, and I am, like, not. Also, in your great venerability, take care to Mind The Gap Between The Train And The Platform, Please. Hee. And sounds like there is too much rum going around. Oooo that reminds me -

I just remembered this a few days ago, but a couple of weeks after we arrived, I went over to Zakia's for the first time, and there was a can of beer in her fridge. So we decided to try it - that's another experience for the scrapbook, trying beer together in her kitchen. XD XD We were laughing so much while pouring it out that we sloshed it into the sink, and then we poured it into glasses but the foam reached the top before it was even half-full! So we were like, quick! drink the foam before it goes away!

It was sooo disgusting, I don't know why people drink it. We both had a mouthful, and we just looked at each other. SPIT! into the sink!

So that was our experience of trying beer together for the first time. A phase people tend to go through in their teens, but all the better for being done in our twenties. XD XD

It was, of course, non-alcoholic.

Oh we've also figured out why Indians like BBC/BBC World so much - it's 'cause it's all about India. Yesterday, for the first time, we FINALLY saw some weather that wasn't for India (sponsored by Gail India), and managed to include Cairo in a corner of it.

Very hot, still. It's October, for God's sake, it should be temperate-er!

How many girls does it take to haul a 3+ kilo-bucket up 6 stories?
Two.

Heidi told me a joke a while back. A guy told her it.

Q: How do you make a woman's life easier?
A: Put her bed in the kitchen.

Here is a ripped-off extract of an email I wrote to Calorie Crinoline Cairo-line Calliope Calliopolis Calorine, Caleroroereoieriionne:

Ooo the other day, this beeg bug flew in from the window, and hung out on the ceiling. How many girls does it take to Raid a buggy? Two and a half! The half is, in fact, a boy, and therefore, half a girl. Not twice a girl, as some might say XD XD We are such chickenettes that we can't even catch a bug honestly - we have to incapacitate it with Raid first, and then scream when it doesn't land where we expect it to, and THEN, we have to yell at someone to get a glass, quick, and argue about who will cover it. Eventually, someone (me) gets annoyed, and just does the damn thing, but then refuses to be further involved in an unspectatorly capacity (hah) so then yet someone else slips a piece of paper under it and scoops it up, before finally depositing it in the toilet (after another lengthy argument about who will carry it, and the unhelpful party being the one to flush the toilet in an attempt to compensate for said lack of help). Do not we lead exciting lives?

All these things happening O_O

This happened at home, at the building site which used to be my primary school. O_o

John (sorry, just answering here) - that guy is...he makes me really uncomfortable, the Hintex guy (opposite the station). I don't know where he got the idea I was going to Pakistan XD I'm not even Pakistani XD XD I made a point of not telling him that I was leaving, but I did mention it to his son, because I got my Misr photos developed there. I stopped going to him since he asked me to marry his son. XD Poor chap was mortified. His son, that is. Arrgh. XD XD Yeah, I reeeeally avoid going to him. He treats me like a long-lost daughter, but in a slightly scary way, and is always asking me if I'm married, and when I'm going to. Scary scary man.

A Saturday always feels like a Monday - it's difficult to adjust to the Thursday-Friday weekend. We just think of those as off-days, and still consider Sat-Sun the weekend. It kind of makes you think like you have a three-day week.

It's October already. Weird. Apart from being pinched and punched, and kicked and flicked (pinch, punch, first of the month and no returns! Kick, flick, for being so quick! Etc.), that's the only normal thing. I'm beginning to feel quite affectionate about our little corner of Cairo - I look out of my window at night, and it gives me almost the same sense of pleasure as looking out at home. It must be something about the night, and the closeness of stars. Speaking of which, the stars are...strange. When we arrived, we had to lean right out of the window to see Orion (the one single constellation I can pick out without resorting to some kind of reference) and his belt. But the other night, I looked out, and he was right there in front of me. Since then, he's moved around night to night...is that normal? I know that, you know, they move and all that, but are they supposed to quite so much? Also, they are bigger here - I'm used to the stars looking very distant, but here they are so big and close. Orion stretches over a large part of the sky, in a slightly grotesque unusual way. *welcomes explanations*

We've (finally) managed to install a Qur'an tutor, and we've had two lessons so far. She is Misriyya, and doesn't really speak English. Her Ammiya is quite difficult to understand until you get used to it, or know what to look out for. For instance, instead of pronouncing the letter 'qaaf,' they drop it - so 'qahwa' (coffee) becomes 'ahwa' - and it's weird when they do it to verbs, like 'qaala' (he said/to say), and in all its various conjugations it sounds very strange - like 'aala', 'na'ool' etc. And I've finally mastered the use of 'mafeesh' (I think), which is basically the Ammiya substitute for 'la' or 'laysa' (no/not). I like how 'mafeesh' sounds. Mah feesh! Muffish. Hee. ^_^

Heidi-hi has gone off to stay with Laa Laa for her last week. It's strange, but you can feel she is not in the house. I didn't think I'd notice much. And it's only the first day night! Zakia left yesterday, and she must be home by now. I went to farewell her, but didn't really do it properly. Just as well, really. I'm so sad she's left...with Laila leaving, that will be the last piece of home gone. Gosh, I won't see Zak for ten months. How many goodbyes I've said, and how many people I've been left by. XD

But! On the BRIGHT SIDE - Free called me yesterday!!!1!!1 Completely didn't expect it but was soooo happy. It was just like...like I was at home and she was calling me just like normal, and just having an ordinary chat and...! Eee! And you actually get quite a good line these days so there was no lag except in intelligence XD; it's the same whenever mum and dad call. It so felt like...just normal. We call used to call each other all the time (well, she calls me when she has the free minutes), and it wasn't like we hadn't spoken for two months at all. Fareeha jiddan, ferry harpy ^_^

Oh, Arabic has crept into all parts of our daily conversation. Especially, 'li maa thaa??' (Why?) 'Li anna...' (because...). We'll go home and nobody will know what we're saying. And we'll have odd little in-jokes that no one will ever understand either. XD Ooo I made sweet rice today. It makes me so happy to be able to cook the things I want to eat. I burnt the almonds a bit at the beginning though, so it's somewhat flecked through with black. But that's okay, because then it just looks like the cinnamon. The only thing really wrong with it is that it is rice-coloured instead of yellow or orange. Or green. I've been looking for food colouring here, in Awlad Ragab, but not yet found. Must ask my mama to send something along. Mmm food colouring. Then we can have multi-coloured pholau for Eid. Yes, us Noakhali-ites don't say pilau or polau. We say pholau. So.

One of the really fun things about Arabic is that loooads of Bangla seems to have come from it. I'd always understood that it was Shanskriti (yay for interspersing my writing with Bangla, too!), which just means it is Sanskrit-based. This definitely refers to the script, which is more like Hindi - unlike Urdu, which doesn't really seem to be much different from Hindi, except that Urdu uses an Arabic script. It's really interesting about Urdu - dad said it was the language of the lashkar (soldiers) who all spoke different languages, which eventually formed modern Urdu. That means that Urdu is, in fact, a kind of Hindiyya Indic creole. The presence of so much Arabic and mutated Arabic is also a sign of the strong impression that the Arab muslim merchants and Islam itself made, to have embedded itself in the language. As we've also been observing, especially with Zakia around, is the difference in our dialects and vocabulary. Zakia speaks 'shud'do' which is fus'ha standard bangla, whereas we speak (badly) a local dialect - a dialect particular to our own district, Noakhali, in Bangladesh. Our dialect is very thick with Arabic words - with a good quantity of words that aren't used at all in standard bangla, but are very common to us. This is all very fascinating, since we know that about six generations ago, our family, and many of the other villages, actually came out of Iraq. It's part of the reason why we look so un-Bengali, and people always mistake us for Iranians, or something. We also know that mum's side of the family were from Baghdad, which is pretty cool, although I'm not sure where dad's side is from. So yeah. I was always embarrassed at the way we couldn't speak standard, but I'm very happy now that I've found that the things we say differently, are in fact, Arabic or Arabicised words. Yeah. ^_^

Hrm. Digressions, eh?

In class, we are doing, 'at-tadkheen,' which is le smoking. In the middle of the lesson, our teacher suddenly stopped and went, 'Eh? Why are we doing stuff about the dangers of smoking? Like anyone here even smokes!' But the words are new and interesting - all infections and epidemics and cancer and slow suicides. Very useful. Shisha hasn't come up yet. Must remember to ask about the dangers of that. Speaking of which, we have shisha bars on either side of us - one seedy one next to the net cafe, and one very classy and fragrant one round the back, which calls itself a coffee shop. They are just like those gentleman's clubs the Victorians and people had. Smells nice.

Hrm, late. Spoke to mummery flummery and daddery for nearly an hour the other day.

Must go to bed.