Not because I'm an uptight grammar weasel. As you can tell from these fragments. No, typos in Egypt can range from the humorous to the unintentionally witty to soul-crushing lies that ruin our feeble attempts to bond with our Egyptian friends and co-workers.
Now, like I said, sometimes typos are a source of amusement for me and my roommates. For instance, I recently saw a sign for a video game "chompionship" in Maasara. Brilliant! No one has ever discovered this lovely little play on words before. PTAs everywhere: next year's pancake eating contest fundraiser must be announced as the "Pancake Eating Chompionship." Perfect.
Other ones are simply confusing--or, perhaps, a result of poor pronunciation making communication a little tricky. Practicing English with my host sister the other day, she told me that she breefars Doritos. It took about 10 minutes for us to figure out she had switched a "b" for a "p", accented the wrong syllable, and changed a vowel. Ah, yes, she prefers Doritos.
Sometimes my students write things like "Sameer meat his girlfriend" instead of met, or mispronounce "six" and "beach," causing them to accidentally sound quite a bit more vulgar. My students also mix up posessive pronouns and subjects fairly often. For example, a student recently said to me, "Yesterday I saw your mother."
"Really? You saw my mother?"
"Yes, you saw my mother."
Now, don't even ask me about my Arabic pronunciation and spelling...all this to say that Egyptians are incredibly gracious about our desecration of their language, and the small mistakes they make in English are generally endearing.
Except for when they dash my hopes.
Now, everyone knows that I'm not too handy in the kitchen. But really, honestly, I swear to you that I've been improving by leaps and bounds. For the past month, I've been working in the evenings, providing ample time to dink around in the kitchen and see what edible concoction I can create out of leftovers in our fridge and local produce. My eggplants are still terrible, but everything else has been turning out pretty well.
I was getting so comfortable with the realm of cooking, actually, that I decided that food would be an excellent conversation topic for my classes.
Enter a new form of soft diplomacy (Obama, I hope you're listening): S'mores.
I went to the import grocery store, put down half my week's salary on marshmallows, cadbury chocolate, and graham crackers, and we roasted them over candles on my desk. They loved them. + 10 points.
The next time, I would not be so successful.
Several weeks ago, I got into a conversation with my Egyptian coworkers about Egyptian food. Like most Egyptians I encounter, they were incredulous that my roommates and I actually ate local food--we knew all the national dishes, liked them, and actually cooked them at home sometimes. We eat the pita bread bought off the street, drink our tea as sweet as the rest of them, and can eat with our hands like its no one's business.
[As an aside, in Istanbul, they apparently eat with forks and knives. Nod and I are so accustomed to eating with our hands, however, that we usually opted to go without. Turks are also apparently really big on hand sanitizers, and often leave some packets of Handi-Wipes with your check. At one restaurant, however, the waiter looked so distressed that we were eating with our hands that he actually came around with a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean our hands for us.]
I began bragging to my coworkers that I had once made Besboussa--a sweet Egyptian pastry, somewhat in the family of Baklava and such. They didn't believe me. I swore that I would make some and bring it in.
Two days ago, I decided to make good on my promise. I bought a box of mix from a cheap, Lebanese brand that is famous for its typos and poor English translation.
"Annoint the pan with oil," the box read. "It mixes two cups of yogurt and three spoons to put butter. It agitates until the similar cream."
The really obvious mistakes I was sort of able to check by looking at the Arabic. No problem, I thought. Now, the whole deal about Besboussa is that the whole thing is supposed to be soaked in a sugar syrup. No sugar syrup, no besboussa. The instructions began like this:
Instructions for the Cold Syrup. I then had to boil water and sugar together. No biggie.
Now, it clearly said cold syrup. So I let it sit on the stove for 10 minutes to reach room temperature again before I poured it over the baked besboussa.
Only, the sugar didn't really soak in. It just kind of formed a sugar lake on top. Hmm. I sprinkled on some coconut and peanuts. There, now that looks prettier, right?
I bit my lip. I mean, it tasted a little strange without the sugar going all the way through it...but this is a hospitality culture, right? Surely my co-workers will recognize the significance of my gesture and accept my gift with graciousness. Surely they'll understand that my little heart is in each piece of besboussa and that all I want to do is be accepted as their friend. Surely.
I carefully packed a dozen pieces of besboussa into a little tupperware box, meticulously placing a layer of tinfoil between the rows so that they wouldn't stick to one another. I cheerfully skipped off to work, excited to bring my dear co-workers a little token of my friendship and appreciation. When I arrived, three of them were sitting outside and sharing a cigarette. I plopped down my box and took of the tupperware cover with a flourishing voila!
They stared.
"What's wrong with the color?" asked one.
I squinted at it. Ok, so it was pretty white, and the normal besboussa is usually kind of a golden brown.
"Don't worry," I told him. "The taste is still delicious."
"Uh, one moment. Let's get everyone so that we can all eat together."
All three of them got up to go inside. They didn't come back. When I peaked in the door, they were all guiltily sitting in the corner, trying to look suddenly busy with work.
I deflated a bit. They weren't that bad, were they?
My dear friend Sally came out next. I confessed to her that I had a little trouble with the sugar. I offered her one, and she accepted reluctantly.
She took one bite. "Alissa, where is the sugar?"
My face slumped into a disappointed frown. "The box said cold syrup."
"Of course, it must be hot."
Sigh. Obviously, right? I should have realized it. She finished half of her piece.
Another coworker breezed by us, on his way out on an errand. I stopped him and insisted that he eat a piece. He stared at it, and then at Sally.
"I already ate one," Sally told him.
He took one bite and then looked for a place to put it down.
"You can put it back in the box," I sighed, totally defeated and feeling sorry for myself. I closed up the box and talked to Sally instead.
C'mon, cheap Lebanese brand! Couldn't you have checked that one little detail... Hot is a lot different than Cold! These things are important!
My roommate Kirsten insists that she likes my Besboussa better than the real stuff, but kind of in that same tone of voice that your parents use to console you when you've failed at an art project but they hang it up on the fridge anyway.
At the end, I ended up giggling over it--poor Egyptians, being force-fed completely terrible pastries! I like to imagine the equivalent situation happening in America...a poor Japanese exchange student trying to fit in by making her American friends brownies, only forgetting to add eggs or water to the mix. Alright, maybe it's not so bad, and my co-workers actually do like me for who I am, not for my besboussa. and that's a good thing!
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