Exotic Weekend

I suppose writing in my blog after a long absence should be full of updates filling in all the gaps and gossip from months of political protests, obstacles at the office, and adventures from summer vacation, instead of the negative recent events that have sparked my motivation to finally write again. 


But after some deliberating, I decided not to put out the spark and rather let the occasional negative story spill out when it wants to be told.

I thought last Saturday would be a usual low-key day off spent with friends at home or at a cafe, but Noelle and Lindsey (American friends who have been my Cairo companions since my arrival) and I decide that we feel like doing something "exotic". So we brainstorm beyond the usual, and decide to visit the botanical gardens near the zoo.

It's a surprisingly lovely garden but the opposite of a peaceful experience. Every single child, teenager and their mother (literally) act like they have never seen a white person before, and subsequently follow, heckle and even taunt us no matter which path we take, until I feel like I should be inside a cage at the zoo across the street instead. 


It's like a Chinese couple living in the States, walking down the street and lots of white Americans trailing them repeating "ni hao!!" "xie xie!" (or even "yellow" or "lemon" - I personally have heard "yogurt" and "cream" a few times) and commenting on their every movement ... In my case I don't think my harassers were malicious, just inconsiderate, and maybe they don't know that every other person is doing the same as them, but for us it really piles up.

So we find a secluded rose garden and have a nice long private chat on a bench, then meander through some other walled gardens. We find a dead end into the wall when we try to turn the corner around a greenhouse, so we double back, and I notice a guy nearby. I also notice he stands just around the corner we're approaching, and I think, ambush. I then notice some other suspicious movements, and I stop Noelle and Lindsey whispering, "I think there's a guy masturbating over there." They shriek, "Ew!" and try the dead end again. 


Seeing that we've retreated, the guy jumps out into the path behind us, and we dissolve into more shrieks as he openly continues in clear view. GROSS. We retreat, but somehow I think of pulling out my camera. I thrust my camera forward obviously as it turns on, and the guy runs away. 


I try to steady my hand to snap, and he picks up a stick from the ground and throws it at me while covering his face with his hand. Obviously the impact is negligible, but then he finds a huge flower pot on the ground, raises it up high, and launches the thing at me. I stumble when it smacks my thigh. 


When he ducks out of sight, I'm not sure if he's in another greenhouse or a tight corner, but I don't feel safe to enter the tight space with someone who is obviously willing to hurt me. For precautionary measure, Noelle and Lindsey then pick up bricks and keep an eye out for him or someone to tell about him. The search is fruitless, and the garden employees don't recognize him from the picture, so we give up. My only satisfaction is not letting him just get away with it, and scaring him a bit after he scared me. The picture I snapped is below, and hilariously the pot is visible in mid-air. 

Then, for some healing, we venture to a ceramic shop and paint pottery. I become largely distracted from our recent trauma by my love of the elephant I'm turning turquoise, while a blue crescent slowly forms on my aching thigh.

After pottery, then dinner, some sheesha (hookah), and a snippet of a music festival, our friend Jessica tries to convince us to come out to a pub to meet her old friend who's in town. It's already been a much longer day than intended, but she persuades me, Lindsey and Mathieu.


Driving there, Mathieu comes to a halt and looks down at the road in front of his car, saying, "Is that a cat? Wait, it's moving..." Gruesome images pop up in my head and I have no desire to look, but the others jump out of the car, sweep up the kitten, and hop back in the car to start looking for a vet. 


We find a really ritzy clinic and watch, like a big family comprising of white 20-somethings, as the vet examines and x-rays her. She has no broken bones or skin, but some internal hemorrhaging and nerve damage (the vet thinks she was knocked aside by a bike or car, but not run over). 

So after some debating within our "family" about what is moral and humane, we decide to put her in intensive care at the clinic for a few days. We checked on her the next day and she's still alive, so the hemorrhaging is hopefully minor, plus her temperature is back to normal. 


She tries to get up (presumably to escape; she's a wild street cat in Cairo after all, and those ain't yo mama's housecat) ... She's just a skinny 4-month old gray thing who's probably never been touched by a human before, and now she's being loomed over by big balloon heads and poked and petted on all sides. But she just mewls motionless, because the nerve damage is preventing her back leg from giving enough support to walk. So the vet just kept rolling her back onto the heated blanket as she panted. 

They've been feeding and hydrating her through an IV. If she makes it through the week, we have to decide if any of us are willing to take this street kitty in, because she'll be weak for awhile longer and that's no way to survive the other bully cats and cars on the street. A new dilemma.