this is the post about saturday, which explains why I said "mostly"

On Saturday Caitlin and I went to the national museum. We got dropped off at the wrong place again (the Greco-Roman musem), but we found our way. I made some sketches of my favorite pieces at the museum. I am starting to feel friendly with that place.

We figured out how to walk back to our neighborhood from there, and got programs from the French cultural center on the way (which are only in french and arabic). We found a place to buy an iron becase our clothes always come off the line full of wrinkles. I remembered the word for iron from our last ‘amiya class. Across the street from that shop was a fresh juice place. We bought fresh lemon juice for a pound each, and sat upstairs so we could look out over the street, but this little girl and boy were sitting by the railing, so we sat farther back and watched them instead. They reminded me of those greeting cards with children posing as adult couples, it looked like a version of the ‘French bistro’ pose, or Paris. It was a great neighborhood, right along Nabi Daniel Street, which is lined with booksellers, which means it is literally lined with books. We started to finally feel comfortable with our place here and competent in taking care of ourselves.

From there we walked to Mohatat Masr, the train station, and through a busy fruit and vegetable and olive and bread and cheese and meat market , and bought a pirated dvd which didn't work (for less than two dollars, oh well), and found a church. We were walking in the wrong direction and we knew it, but we kept going because the building was so huge and majestic, and the neighborhood looked poor, we wanted to see what it was. When we got closer we knew that it was a church, and it was huge, but there were gigantic cement blocks in front of all the entrances, like someone had finally had to abandon it and didn't want anyone to get in. We could see over the cement blocks through the grill to the inside. There was beautiful greco-roman detail on the columns.

I wanted to know whose church it used to be and what happened…about four or five years ago there were a lot of very violent riots in Alexandria, which is where the Muslim Brotherhood is based. Had it been cemented up then? Or much earlier? Is it just another place that Alexandria doesn’t have the funds or the organization or the impetus to preserve?

The district all around the church looked like a car repair district, men were grinding off paint and welding things and all the chemicals in the air were making us sick so we turned back.

We walked through the market again, and we found our way to a fatir restaurant on our street called Ana Misho. They also serve koshary, pasta, and apparently hamburgers, and we decided to try some of those other dishes but they weren't very good.

Still, we felt that we had made progress because the last time we were there our waiter kept changing the music to 'gasolina' over and over again, and smiling at us as if we liked it, as if we wanted to hear gasolina playing every time we walk into a fast food restaurant (this has happened to us before. I don't know why). This time they left the music playing as it was.

As we were walking home we spotted another juice place across the street. This one had coconuts, and since our food was so unsatisfying we thought it might be a good time to try a new juice drink. We especially want to try more places in our neighborhood, so we don’t feel we have to go far away to eat and drink well.

Just as we were about to enter, I saw this man approaching out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t really take notice of him, there are always men in my periphery vision, talking to me, even, but I can’t respond and so I have taught myself almost not to notice them.

But suddenly this man leaned in and spit in my face.

It was a very fine spray, actually. I remember noticing that, and appreciating it.

The men on the street yelled at him:
'Why did you do that?'
'Why?!' he yelled out, 'Because they're asses!'
We decided not to get any juice.
And I started to cry.

Egypt makes me very emotional, all my emotions are right beneath the surface and constantly getting triggered, good and bad, one after another.

I know the guys who had yelled at the man saw me crying, they were staring at us when Caitlin put her arm around me. We walked the whole way back to the apartment like that, me with my hand over my mouth.

Caitlin had to buy more water from Fathalla, the market on our street, so I went back up to the apartment by myself. While I was sitting alone in the apartment waiting for Caitlin to come back and not knowing exactly what to do because Mona was in Cairo I wondered...idly…if he was someone we had pissed off in particular. If he was a cab driver, or some other person, maybe, who we hadn't paid more than he charges everyone else…and he recognized us.

I almost like that idea better. The reason I don't lie when people ask me where I'm from is because I think we need to represent ourselves well when we get the chance. But when we are just walking down the street we don’t have the chance to represent anything, our face means whatever it means to the people who see us.

It is frustrating to run into that without having the chance to explain. I know that a lot of people experience that in America, this is just a short slice out of my life, and that it probably won't even happen to me again.

But I felt hurt because I am putting so much energy into this venture, and I really care about each and every thing that I do here and what kind of a story I take back with me when I go home. So it disappoints me, even though I know that that man is not a representative of his country.

Just as I am not really a representative of mine.