The Woman Whose Job is to Clean Toilets

To address her in a respectful manner, she expects people to call her Om Mahmoud. But since I'm her friend it's fine for me to call her Hanan. I don't know what her last name is. Either way, I doubt she would ever have the opportunity to Google her name.

Her job is to clean toilets. Make sure there is enough toilet paper, paper towels and soap. Wipe the floor after people who carelessly let the water on their arms and faces drip down. It may seem like a very simple job, but this is the first experience Hanan has with the world outside her family and it scares her every day.

When Hanan isn't cleaning toilets, she sits on a stool in the bathroom with her arm resting on the sink. She plays a few songs on her cell phone with the volume really low so as not to disturb the rest of the workers and holds the phone close to her ear to listen to the music. If she's played the songs too many times she'll call information and just listen to the automated message, pressing 1 for Arabic, 2 for the latest promotions. Another sort of music to help pass the time.

Hanan has three kids, one girl and two boys. One of her boys has a disability, although I'm not sure what. She says her husband's brother's daughter looks exactly like me. I have yet to see pictures and confirm this for myself. But still, I am happy to resemble someone close to her enough to put a smile on her face whenever I walk into the bathroom. To know that our short conversations about those scary auditors (or what she calls "wafd el 7'awaga"), her children, or my work, puts her more at ease to be leaving her house and family and stepping into a cold and lonely bathroom.

Today is Tuesday and Hanan hasn't been to work the past three days; she is out sick. And I realized today that if I were to leave my job here at IBM there are exactly two people I would miss seeing everyday: Heba Amin, who has been my buddy since our first year of university together; and Hanan.

This reminds me of the first day of our sophomore year at university when Passant Rabie and I had a bet going on to see who would say hello to more friends. Even though Passant won if we were to count university friends (she won by a small difference), she laughed at me because if we had counted all the security guards that waved at me, said hello and asked how my summer was, I would have won by a landslide.

So I see I am still as awkward as ever, not trying to fit in because I know that I never will. Nor will I ever be happy to.

Breaking up Is Like Throwing out the Trash

One of the perks of being in that phase just after graduation and right before you start working, taking some leisurely time off under the pretense that the financial crisis isn’t helping Egypt’s employment rate much… I think I lost the trail of this sentence. Anyway, one of the perks is having all this free time to do all the stuff you usually want to do but never get around to because there just aren’t enough hours in a single day and not enough weekends in a single week.

Today I happily did two of those things. One of them was that I got to write in my blog. The other is that I cleaned up all the junk that has been piling up on my desk for almost a year now (since I moved to my new room when my sister got married… Yup, my sister is celebrating her one year anniversary this month… Wow, one whole year! Time sure does fly) and also the junk that has been piling up on my old desk in my old room… I’ll assume the junk there has been piling up for two years. And by the way, you should know that I consider myself to be one of the most organized people in the world.

Yes, yes, so anyway, of course I’m not writing to tell you all about the awesome time I had with a huge, blue garbage bag and little dust particles. What I am trying to write about (with a somewhat long and chatty introduction) is the things I came across from among the junk that has been collecting on my two desks for the past two or so years. Or in particular, one certain thing I came across from among all that junk. It was something I had spent around two weeks making for a certain ex-boyfriend of mine while he was in California. Of course my millions of fans that have been following my blog regularly know exactly who I’m talking about, but I’ll refrain from allowing this ex-boyfriend to read this post about him when he Googles his name. It doesn’t feel appropriate.

Long, chatty and emotionally-confused story short, I threw that thing I had found in the big, blue garbage bag along with the dust particles and other junk. It feels weird that I would throw out something that a little over a year ago meant the world to me. And that is how I discovered that breaking up is not only like losing a toe, it’s also exactly like throwing out the trash. Or maybe those are two stages that come after each other. Break ups: It’s like you lose a toe, then some thousand tear-soaked tissues later, it’s like you took out the trash. Sometimes my own witticism scares me.

 

P.S. I am truly sorry to all my fans if the font, text size and spacing are inconsistent throughout my last few posts. I have had this Macbook for probably two months and I am still Mac-illiterate.

The Long Awaited Idiotic Comeback

I have spent all day (a few hours actually, but I always dramatically exaggerate) shopping for a Mother's Day present for my soon-to-be mother-in-law. First of all, don't ask me how it is possible that I have gone so long without sharing with the world (or actually a handful of people) how I came to have a soon-to-be mother-in-law. I think I am still comprehending that one and I haven't formed real sentences, just a bunch of letters and squeaky sounds like "OMG, OMG, OMG" and "eeeeek".

Back to the point at hand. The present. I don't know why shopping for presents have always given me panic attacks. Could be because I base a lot of judgement on an individual on the gift they get me that I am overwhelmed by getting judged all that much in return. The thought of this present is making me so unease to the extent that it brought me out of my four-month blogless dry spell.

But enough about the present. How about the fact that I have a soon-to-be mother-in-law? Oh God, it's still too soon to process.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!!

22 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1.  Backpack through Europe

2.  Go to Australia

3.  Go surfing

4.  Learn a new language

5.  Be a mom

6.  Have really long hair

7.  Go on a road trip through Egypt

8.  Climb St. Catherine

9.  Work for Google

10. Write a novel

11. Play an instrument

12. Go into a sex shop

13. Visit 100 countries

14. Live alone

15. Go on hig

16. Camp in the desert

17. Take self-defense classes

18. Go swimming in the ocean at night

19. Go to a strip club

20. Audition for reality show

21. Go to the movies four times in a row

21. Live in another country

22. Meet Nawal El Saadawi