Written with both humor and poignancy, the narrator details the challenges, and frustration of an American working with the privileged few in the Third World, as well as his association with the peasant class, which created his contempt for their leaders, but a deep affection for the subjugated people forced by birth into a world of poverty and indifference.
“If I could convince others to read between these lines, they would find most of their problems are minor. In that event, then perhaps, like me, they will accept the pictures of a decaying world and the slaughter of the innocents as real and conclude living is better than simply existing. If they do, they will take the opportunity to make the best of the few short moments they have.”
Mr. Pat was born on April 15, 1942 into a middle-class American family. Always in a hurry but seldom settled, and after one impatient move after another he found himself embarking on a life-changing journey to the Middle East. Project Egypt is an engaging tale of Mr. Pat’s experiences, on the job and off, while working and living in Cairo, Egypt.
Driving is not the only problem for an American in Cairo. I take necessities of life for granted that are missing in most of the Middle East, which can cause an American on assignment grave discomfort. One I thought to be basic and have never considered a real issue is toilet paper.
Most of the four or five-star restaurants and hotels have facilities with this basic, civilized world item. When you do find it available in the Middle East, you often cannot use it because whoever manufactured it locally glued the last flap to the roll with a paintbrush. By the time you get a handful separated, you are down to the core. This can be a frustrating experience when you are in a hurry to finish the paperwork and another tourist is banging on the door who will blame you for the empty spool and the shreds of
paper scattered all over the floor.
Those of us who lived in Cairo for a while learned a local custom that assisted us in resolving this inconvenience. If you have a good sense of feel and you know the right place to reach, there is usually a valve behind the toilet. Just hope your arms are long enough to reach it without getting off the seat. That is, if you have the courage to sit on the seat and you are not trying to balance yourself, while holding your pants off the floor and away from the last person’s shitty aim. But then again, that is often not a problem because there is no seat.
Once you find the valve handle and if the water is working, be sure you are in a comfortable position. When you open the valve, you get a first class ass washing. That is, unless the last foreigner somehow managed to get some of the toilet paper off the roll. If they did, it is usually stuck on the pipe you cannot see, that sprays the water everywhere except where you need it; rather than your own shit on your ass, you have someone else’s used toilet paper plastered all over your backside.
There is seldom a sink in a public bathroom that works. After you somehow manage to clean yourself up, which is probably why the Arabs think the left hand is unclean; you have to rely on the drip-dry method, unless you are wearing one of the local outfits, which allow the Middle East natives to squat and shit anywhere they please. The gown looks like a nightgown but one of the correct names is a Thobe.
Regardless, if you are not prepared, it can be embarrassing when you sneak back into the dining room looking like you just sat down in a bucket of water.
I refused to wear traditional Arab clothes or conform to their customs so I had to devise my own method of solving the paper shortage. I made it a point to steal the napkins off dining room tables within reach when I had the opportunity. I do not think I am the only foreigner who thought of the idea, which could explain why most dinner napkins in the hotels of Cairo are the size of an American cocktail napkin.
Sometimes the water does not work and there is not a roll of glued paper. After the reaction the western body has to the food in Egypt, most of us do not have time to check the toilet for the
necessities, which is a reason most of the expats living in the Middle East make sure to keep their laundry work up to date.
Project Egypt, although not always politically correct, describes people and stuations I met, while I dealt with a way of life I found foreign to my upbringing. I have throughout the following pages, allowed myself the luxury of writer’s license, manipulating he circumstance depending on my attitude at the time. Like the millions of others in this world who are wapped up in their own existence, I have found reality is only what I am emotionally willing to deal with at the time. Had I accepted what I found, without trying to do something about it, might have meant approve.
Known as the City of the Pharaohs, the Sphinx guards the entrance to the great Pyramids. Egyptians claim 7,000 years of history, however, much of the culture is frozen in time, or struggling to emerge and set aside its Third World image.
Filming the tourist sections and the perimeter of the villages was a way to spend an afternoon, filming the inner villages bordering the desert, or the refugee camps, where fundamental Muslim ideology has deep roots, is difficult and often impossible. Islam is the basis for life in the Muslim Middle East and all other outward expressions of religious belief are forbidden. In some countries, Islam condemns photography, teaching that capturing an image on film is a form of idolatry.
As an American sheltered from the reality of life outside my own experiences, I was at first unable to accept the poverty of the masses, the indifference of their rulers and the obvious lack of concern by the leaders of the free world. Had I accepted what I found, without trying to do something about it might have meant I approve.