Fold like a cat's ear

I am not entirely sure if I like this travelling for business thing. When what I really wanted to do was watch a little boy eat bananas while pretending to arrange them on top of a rickety green van passing by, I had to churn out some very important sounding numbers from my laptop balanced alongside my coffee, inside a madly moving vehicle, as an Egyptian businessman sat there, inhaling my every word and processing them in his head. These Egyptian men are quite chivalrous, I must give them that. He proceeds to take the coffee out of my hand, lets me work better and then gives the cup back to me in intervals, so that I could take a sip. This, is immensely thoughtful and insanely embarrassing, and I curse myself for picking a takeaway coffee when I drop some on my patent pumps. Double damn. But looking as calm as one can be in such a situation, I continue to attempt asking the right questions and I give him more numbers when suddenly his face lights up like those slot machines in Vegas. I could almost hear the clanging sound of money in his head too, if I listened hard enough. Which, is a good thing by all means.

That out of the way, I proceed to enjoy my one precious free evening in beautiful, mad Cairo.

Some of my old cronies from the boats who lived in Egypt managed to land up at my hotel and after our boisterous reunion involving cries and yelps, it was a crazy ride into the old town part of Cairo, the car zigzagging along like Alice's tumble into the wonderland of mad characters. 'This, is the oldest cafe in all of Cairo,' declares my friend with a flourish as he leads me down a tunnel like opening. Old druids in white robes carrying glassy globes of shisha pots, cross eyed men walking around looking for a shoe to polish, young girls dancing to the sounds of cymbals, old women carrying genie lamps... all of these characters walk in this smoky haze as I sit, watching enthralled, enjoying a rather normal cup of warm milk, I think, under these circumstances. The milk tastes different. Alarmed, I look at Sameh, my friend who had emerged out of the smoke with this glass of offering. 'It's just coconut mixed with milk and some nuts. Very vegetarian,' he adds with a smile. I finish it quickly. It turned out to be delicious. So was the khosheri, a mixture of pasta, rice, onions and younameit. And then they proceed to teach me to eat bread. 'Well, I know how to eat bread', I say flippantly. They tear open the bread horizontally, like stripping peas from a pod. And then my friend says, ' Fold the bread in the shape of a cat's ear and scoop the gravy in it'. I say this in my mind, 'like a cat's ear'. I chew happily on this phrase, thinking about the little epiphanies of travel, in the noisy, smoky cavern of floating Egyptians. I think that night I dreamt of genies, bananas and lots of cats.

Like the Sun

' Like the sun that moves across the sky, the scarab beetle moving the ball of dung is believed to represent the cosmic forces of the lord Khepri who governs our universe.' This sentence which would have seemed unreal reading off a computer, seemed quite real when placed on a placard in front of the mummified remains of a tiny dung beetle in Cairo.

' Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.' This sentence that sounds inane before every single station in London seemed to have a new meaning when I watched a student's guitar twang in protest to the automatic closing doors.

Things, that make us perceive everything ordinary to be a little less ordinary. In probable digression, I remember this discussion with a friend about the night sky; If the billions of nebulous stars were to come out and twinkle for just one night, there would be stampedes and balcony bookings a year in advance. Now that they are there everyday, people spend lifetimes without merely glancing up.