I wrapped the blankets around me. Ah, Thanksgiving. If you had told me that there was snow and a touch football game outside my window, I would have believed you.
But no, like every day in Egypt, life goes on normally but just....well, slightly differently than it would back home. Like, we were celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday instead of Thursday, since Friday is the Islamic day of prayer and our day off. Or that I bought my sweet potatoes for the casserole from a man on the street wearing a long white galibaya who wheels around a portable roasting oven, and you just have to sort of hope that you run into him when you want some. Just little things that like that remind you you're not going to spend your Thanksgiving waiting in line at Safeway with a bottle of Reddi-Whip in your hands.
Another one of those moments came while I was waiting for my casserole to bake (2 words I never thought I'd say together: "my" and "casserole." Wonders never cease) and I killed time by listening to the Axis of Evil comedy tour instead of watching the Macy's parade or pretending to take a sudden interest in football. The tears were rolling down my cheeks from laughter. When you intimately understand jokes about airport security (my passport stamps from Syria haven't helped me much when it comes to avoiding "random" security pat downs on my travels), headscarves, and West Bank politics, you know that you've been in the Middle East too long.
Today's Thanksgiving was really special, actually. Aside from the fact that I neither burned myself nor any of the food I was responsible for, which itself was a miracle, we had our entire host family over to our house. This itself was quite a feat, since it involved assembling three generations from two different neighborhoods and a lot of women who don't ordinarily like to leave their comfort zones. But when all was said and done, we had a dinner that resembled--in spirit and in form--the Thanksgiving meal. Too full stomachs, funny stories and banal banter, kids running around the "adult table," a pile of dishes and lots of leftovers... it felt genuine.
But I'll be damned if I know how to be a proper Egyptian hostess! We've gotten better. Our first attempt was over Halloween.
Points gained for: politely and repeatedly insisting that they eat more than any human could possibly ingest.
Points lost for: trying to get them to serve themselves buffet style (initially, at least); serving them apple cider and chai (baffling), and hacking a pumpkin to death to make Jafar the Jack o'lantern (alarming).
If we've gotten better, it's only barely. Our persistent problem--aside from knowing how to actually put the food onto their plates, which is trickier than it seems--is keeping them out of the kitchen when the meal is over. They insist on washing the dishes. Today actually dissolved into (friendly) hair pulling and a 5 minute shouting match until we forcibly dragged our host sister away from the suds-filled sink.
This time, they were prepped for the buffet style service, having encountered it once before. Now, perhaps we should have learned the first time, but there simply was too much food to fit on the table or on any one person's plate. And since it was mostly American food and strange to them, we didn't want to assume that they necessarily wanted to eat all of what was in front of them, either.
We came to an awkward impasse, however. On Halloween, only women came. Now they were there with the grandfather and husband. We tried to get them all in a line, to pick up their own plates and get their own food. The awkward tension that followed left us scrambling for plan B. Luckily, the Egyptian women swooped into action, working their own assembly line and getting the men served before helping themselves. Whew. Alright, as long as everyone's happy.
Dinner itself was full of pleasant munching and pangs of indigestion from overeating--and, in all, I think they liked our food alright.
Another slightly awkward moment came as we were lolling about after dinner like beached whales, waiting to digest dinner before we could launch into the pies. I pointed to my full stomach.
"Look," I showed my host sister. "A food baby." I said the phrase literally in Arabic.
"What? You have a baby?"
"No, a food baby, see?" She laughed, getting the joke.
"But if you had a baby," she said, "They would do this," and she proceeded to make rapid fire poking motions at my stomach.
"Um, you would tickle me?"
"No!" she corrected me, and then make a big slit motion across her throat. "Kill you!" She was laughing. Um...ha, ha... honor killings?!
(Now, for the record, honor killings are very rare in Egypt, especially in Cairo. But she was right to suggest that the social consequences for pregancy out of wedlock would be grave, to say the least. Happily for everyone, however, this indeed was a pumpkin soup and greenbean baby, so I didn't have to push the boundaries on that one!)
After we were convinced that the family really couldn't eat another piece of dessert, they eventually said their goodbyes and headed out for the night--after a big round of kisses on both cheeks, of course.
Once the dishes had been cleared and the mashed potatoes put in its tupperware container, we did what any normal American house of roommates would do the night of Thanksgiving. Er, the night of the-day-after-Thanksgiving-in-Egypt. We snuggled in together on this cold, desert night to watch a movie--nay, the greatest film of all time: West Bank Story, the musical. That's right--a Palestinian sweetheart and an Israeli soldier, the Hummus Hut vs. the Kosher King gang, all set to glorious music and with the sweetest fastfood headgear you have and will ever see. Then again, perhaps watching Hasidic Jews and Palestinian militants in song and dance numbers is one of those things that you only find funny after living here this long. Apparently you can find it on iTunes. I promise you: it will change your life.
So, with this posting concludes my Thanksgiving season. A lot like home...er, only a little different.
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