Tales from the crackhouse.

It began innocently enough.
My roommate K and I decided to mark our two-month anniversary in Egypt with our first weekend trip outside Cairo. We picked for our destination the beautiful Marina—a resort town on the Mediterranean Sea, far away from the crowds, heat, and pollution of Cairo.
Three friends planned to come along: Bret, an American teacher and co-worker of K., Alaa (pronounced: a-LET) and Amir—Egyptian co-workers of K. and good friends of ours.
In the typical Egyptian style, there was only a minimal level of planning that went into the weekend. The day we were set to leave, I was told to meet up with everyone at 8:30pm, and that we'd crash with Alaa's cousin for the night in Alexandria before continuing onto Marina the next day.

Easy enough. Unfortunately, I had been suffering from a bit of digestive funk the day before, so I was bracing myself for an uncomfortable, long ride in a microbus, some 3 hours on a dark desert road that connects the two cities. I had learned from an Egyptian friend that guavas naturally soothe a number of stomach ailments, so I popped a few small ones in my purse and prayed for the best.

Burping guava might be one of the worst things ever. Four of us crunched into the back of a janky van (Bret took the front seat by the driver), and passed a hand fan back and forth between us to try not to suffocate. I closed my eyes and tried to will the stomach pain away.

We finally arrived in Alexandria around 2 a.m. The air smelled sweeter. The Mediterranean Sea was within reach. Outdoor cafes bustled with brightly dressed Egyptian families and strands of colored lights. Ahh. How good to be out of Cairo.

We caught a taxi and gave the driver the address of Alaa's cousin. We passed by the overflowing cafes…then passed the famous library…into deserted streets...on the edge of the city… the driver finally dropped us off at what had to be the edge of Alexandria—and, as far as we were concerned, sitting on the street curb at 3 in the morning—the edge of civilization and the world as we knew it.

Alaa called his cousin, but he wasn't picking up. We shuffled our feet and tried to think of what other options we had.
Suddenly, a car came screeching around the corner, slamming on its breaks right beside us. A guy in his mid 20s staggered out of the car and stumbled towards us. Yusef, Alaa's cousin. I peered at him through the darkness. Did we just wake him up, and he's sleepy? After a moment, it became abundantly clear. Nope, not sleepy at all—he was high out of his mind.
We all exchanged glances. What should we do? What were our choices?

(Now, gentle readers, I know that you are all going to going to start shouting advice at the computer screen as you read this, much as people usually do when they watch their favorite characters in horror movies stupidly bumble towards their own deaths. Let me assure you that I suddenly share a new empathy with such characters—choices are harder to make in such moments than you'd think).

Sighing, we all loaded ourselves and backpacks into his car. Scarcely before the doors had shut, he began tearing down narrow, winding streets at 80 mph, slamming on his breaks at each block as the car skid over the dust on the road. Now, there have been many moments in my 3rd world travels when I have waited to die in car crashes or from driving off of a cliff. In those moments, I have closed my eyes and acknowledged my powerlessness with a certain fatalism.

Never has the threat of bursting into flames on sudden impact been so real. I found a seatbelt and strapped myself in, with the conscious thought that I might be the only one with a chance of surviving. All of the other cars on the road pulled over to let us pass, staring out at us with terrified expressions on their faces. Right. If you were ever thinking about getting in a car with someone high out of their minds on cocaine, I would recommend against it.

By some grace of God, we finally came to a screeching halt, and we all stumbled out of the car, pretty weak in the knees. Yusef stared us down. "I need to get something. Alaa, come with me."
We were left alone on a fairy empty street, save for one lit up convenience store a block away. I figure they're going to buy hash. Instead, Yusef returns moments later with a chainsaw blade in his hand.

We blanched collectively--we were suddenly watching our own low-budget horror flick Yusef points to the dark building beside the car, and swings open a metal gate. He motions us in.
I stared at the ground for a moment. I could walk away—or more appropriately, run away screaming—but here we were, reluctantly shuffling our way towards the door like sheep to the slaughter. The moment was too unreal to actually be afraid, and there was the comfort of safety in numbers. I wasn't about to head off alone.

Two enormous guard dogs slept inside the doorway—all the more troubling to see, since dogs are unclean animals in Islam, and are never kept as pets.
We climbed a set of stairs, and were suddenly greeted by Yusef's very ordinary, sweet mother who started fussing a bit over where we should put down our things, welcoming us to her house. "Alright," I thought. "At least we have an ally."

Yusef motioned the guys to keep following up him upstairs, but told K. and I to stay put in this disconcertingly barren, piss-smelling room. Hell no, he's not going to keep us down here without the guys around! K. and I sat on the ratty sofa—the one piece of furniture in the entire room—and contemplated our options. We didn't have long to think, because Yusef soon reemerged. He put a key in the door so that we could lock ourselves in. "This is for your safety," he deadpanned, and then left.
My stomach sank. Safety from who? Who is Yusef afraid of?

Thus began our night in the crack house.
There were two beds for Kirsten and I to sleep on, dirt smeared on the walls along with pencil graffiti of flowers and English definitions of Qur'anic terms. A rug on the floor was inexplicably soaked. There was no toilet seat, but it worked—kind of. While we could lock ourselves in, none of the windows could shut. Still, we could hear crickets outside, and now that we were alone with a locked door, we felt ourselves relax a bit.

Right before K. and I managed to fall asleep, Alaa called K's cellphone. "I have fear," he said in broken English. "Scary movie, scary movie." We didn't find out until the next morning that Yusef had spent the whole night threatening them with swords. "Don't fall asleep, or I'll kill you," he said. "Converse on your favorite subject," he demanded (in English) of our friend Bret. "You must pray the 4am prayer," he said, brandishing the chainsaw blade when they heard the muezzin's call from the mosque. The guys didn't sleep until well after dawn. He also robbed Alaa at knifepoint at one point.

K. and I made it through the evening without incident, and actually had a pretty good night's sleep. We began calling the guys around 10am. No one answered their phones. K. and I both began seriously considering the possibility that they were dead. Finally, one of the guys picked up, and we began to prepare to get the hell out of there.

Unfortunately, Yusef's mom wandered in and insisted that we eat breakfast. This being Alaa's aunt, there are still family obligations here—even if her son is a heroin addict and crazy (we only found out later that Yusef's brother is currently in prison for killing 3 sailors on the cargo ship they both work on. Right). Breakfast has to be made…then the tea served…. Soon it was 1pm, and we were still in the crackhouse when we suddenly heard the call to Friday prayer (from, of all places, the mosque in the basement of the building).

Alaa and Amir are adamant—they would not miss prayer. It was starting to get uncomfortably warm inside the house, stray cats had begun to wander in, and Yusef's antics were becoming as annoying as they were threatening. K, Bret and I were not about to spend another minute there.
Finally they agreed simply to pray, but not to go to the mosque for the sermon. By 1:30pm, we were finally sitting in the safety of an air-conditioned bus on our way out of Alex.
Suddenly, this was all very, very funny. I made a call to a friend, "Guess what I did last night??" Yusef became the running joke of the weekend—but with a kind of relief that comes from having been in a hellish situation before.

Right. Now we need Plan B, since staying with Yusef for the weekend is out of the question. Alaa and Amir begin making phone calls, seeing what kind of deals they can work out. Alaa gets off the phone. "I have a friend we can stay with," he says.
"Um, Alaa, your track record in this department hasn't been too good so far"
"No, no, trust me."

It turns out that his friend is the son of a general in the Egyptian army, and is staying by himself in a condo at a private seaside resort reserved only for officers in the military. We can stay at his condo for free. When we pull up to the resort, we're greeted by the stunning luxury of a gated resort community, private white sand beaches, Carribean-warm blue water, and everything coming to us for free.

We spent the next two days flaunting a western dress code while we pitched a tent on the beach and enjoyed the waves all to ourselves. Why wasn't this plan A?? Alaa's childhood friend turns out to be a very sociable, very rich 21 year old with his own clothing line that he's about to start marketing in Dubai.
The rest of the weekend felt very much like a (posh) American weekend away with friends—here we were as one of the guys, thinking and feeling and acting like Americans for the first time in two months. It had been too, too long to stay in Cairo without any kind of break.

On the microbus home to Cairo (we didn't get back until 5:30am—then off to work in the morning!), I reflected on the deep relief I felt to be outside of the city. I had started to develop a battle mentality in Egypt: always defensive in my interactions, exasperated with harassment on the street, feeling protective of myself and always judging myself against the most critical standards of Egyptian culture and conservatism—and always feeling that I came up short.

Feeling my American self again on the Mediterranean sea, I regained my spine. Cairo looks very different when you stop playing the embattled victim—the men don't actually harass you as often as you suspect them of doing so, I don't need to power down the sidewalks at a breakneck speed as if to apologize for my presence in Egyptian society, I can actually probably relax my dress code a bit. At the very least, I can stop feeling ashamed whenever my elbows are showing.

To respect the culture is one thing, and remains my absolute commitment here. But to swallow in and internalize everything about the culture without disagreement? I've never done that before in my life, and I shouldn't do that here, either. My rebellious coffee break yesterday with my supervisor was a reminder that Egyptians themselves push back against things they don't agree with in the culture. I should feel free to do the same.