There’s a match.
Tomorrow night in Cairo, there’s a football match.
It’s not just any match. It’s a face-off between Egypt and its two-doors-down neighbor, Algeria. It’s the match that will decide which of the two teams will qualify for the 2010 World Cup.
The last time Egypt qualified for the World Cup was in 1990: nearly two decades ago.
The last time Algeria qualified for the World Cup was in 1986: two decades and a bit.
Both countries are gagging for it.
Their combined populace of 110 million have whipped themselves up into a frenzy in the months leading up to this night. Match-related ads – selling everything from kebab to telecommunications – have been cranked out; patriotic (and religious!) anthems have been written and earnestly sung.
And let’s not forget the abuse that has been hurled back and forth across cyberspace and along airwaves, the smack talk spattering the pages of print media. A verbal bloodbath that has prompted ministers from both sides to hold press conferences and insist that relations between the two countries are still strong.
My French teacher is Algerian. We adore her: she is firm in that specs-on-nose sort of way, but still great fun. In recent weeks some of the (Egyptian adult) students have been goading her about the game.
Yesterday the discussion got quite heated as one student started enumerating all the supposed ways in which Algeria is historically beholden to Egypt. Madame N replied in her usual way – pointed but playful. She let it go on for a bit, then tapped her pen on the desk.
“Alors…revenons à nos moutons.“
Let’s return to our sheep.
To our blank expressions, she explained that it was a saying which simply means ‘back to the subject’. In a minute the class was back to chattering about their latest holidays in the passé composé.
Except for me. I was too busy daydreaming about where an expression like that might possibly originate.
(Is it what a Welshman says after a failed romantic venture?)
NB. A less fanciful explanation may be found here.
I’ve been restless.
Restless in the good sense (itchy feet that have wandered through a dozen towns and cities in the past few weeks) but also in the exhausting one (a racing mind that will grant me no respite, even in sleep).
I’ve never been good at this “sleep” malarkey, you see. It seems like something that should come naturally, but I’ve always struggled with getting to bed on time, with getting out of it when I should, and most of all, with the time in between. Too much stuff from my day worms its way into my night, too much undigested food and half-chewed thoughts, and I mentally thrash around, trying to resolve it all in the anxious, piecemeal, elusive world of dreams.
But then – all too rarely – there is the odd glorious night.
Last night. Rest at last. I don’t know how. In the words of Neruda, “I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river.” But there it was: a night of warm, lush, sweet, enveloping sleep.
This morning, as I hovered slowly out of it, feeling somehow nourished and more serene than I had in weeks, I remembered what the Dutch wish each other before bed.
It’s none of that general “Good night”/”Gute nacht”/”Bonne nuit” stuff. Nothing in the more specific but still rather prosaic “Sleep well”/”Schlaf gut”/”Dors bien” line of greetings. The Arabs have a pretty good one: to the retiring person you say tesbah ala-kher (“may you awaken in goodness”) and s/he answers wenta min ahlo (“and you are one of its people”). But no, on this one, the Dutch take the cake.
Slaap lekker, they wish you. Delicious sleep.
Fil mish-mish, ya Si Mish-Mish…
In the apricot, O Sir Apricot…
A nonsense rhyme from my childhood. Until last Monday, I was blissfully unaware of its meaning. Just some nonsense rhyme that accompanied the rolling credits of some TV drama. My mum sang it to me sometimes, with waggling eyebrows.
Until last Monday.
I had a cooking night planned with two girlfriends. Turkish zucchini fritters were on the menu, alongside creamy beetroots swirled with lemon relish, and an orange-sesame salad. But I had mish-mish on the mind. I was lusting after apricots: those gently curved, blushing brides I’d spied at the market just the day before. I had visions of slicing them open and easing them into a hot oven with some aromatics — cinnamon, ginger, lemon zest, maybe a touch of brown sugar? — for the flavours to mingle and flirt, the juices to run.
It was not to be.
On Monday, at the market, the apricots were nowhere to be found. Desperate, I scoured the aisles of a nearby grocery store. I called up my mum in a panic to ask if she could find any close to her work. She came home empty-handed. Mafish mish-mish!
“Guess apricot season is over,” she said.
“But I saw some only yesterday!” I cried, my heart fizzing to the ground like a pierced helium balloon.
“Yeah, well, that’s apricots for you—here one minute, gone the next.” She sat down beside me. “That’s why, when someone wants something that’s not very likely to happen, you say…”
She waggled her eyebrows, and I knew what was coming. We said it in unison.
“Fil mish-mish.”
***
Side note: ‘mish-mish’ is a quite a cutesy name for a fruit, wouldn’t you say?
‘Mish’ alone is an Egyptian word, meaning ‘not’ (e.g. mish momkin – not possible).
So, interestingly enough, saying ‘mish-mish’ sounds like you’re saying ‘not-not.’
A name befitting that coy coquette of a fruit…
“Kont-if-noss hodoomy!”
I was in half my clothes!
So exclaimed my friend Purple, and for once she wasn’t referring to a recent steamy encounter. In fact, she was describing a situation considerably more bizarre. An evening earlier, the husband of her friend had approached her for advice on how to please his woman in bed.
And what was her reaction? Was she excited by the request, as her words above might lead one to believe? Nay. The usually loquacious Purple was struck dumb, feeling as though half her clothing had suddenly dropped off; i.e. she was caught in a state of acute embarrassment, with a smidgen of shame thrown in for mortifying measure.
It’s like the Egyptian streetspeak version of that universal nightmare: you show up at your first day of school / do-or-die work presentation / Broadway debut . . . clad only in your smalls.
(*with apologies to Madonna)
My father is flicking through TV channels. Flick, flick, flick. Pause.
A man stands outside a boxing ring, sporting a neck brace.
“Then he punched me right here and I couldn’t see anything and I fell over – “
The interviewer cuts in with his big bulbous mike:
“Zar‘ basal?”
Onion-planted?
The boxer concurs.
“Zar‘ basal!”
Onion-planted!
I turn to baba. “Did they just say something about…onions?”
“Yeah, he said he fell like an onion is planted.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
My baba smiles the childlike smile that squints his eyes into half-moons. It’s the one that appears whenever he shares with his little city girl a memento of his country childhood: how to spot a pregnant rabbit, or tell the difference between ducks and geese.
He balls his hands together. Two fingers – leaves – pop up from the bulb. The onion is lowered into the thick carpet.
“Headfirst.”
You arrive at your grandmother’s house. The table is set; the scent of garlicky molokhiyya wafts. Your aunts swarm around you and smack wet kisses on your cheeks. They chorus:
“hamaatik bit-hibbik!”
Your mother-in-law loves you!
You look around the room. No mother-in-law in sight. Then you remember:
you are single.
Your grandmother emerges from the kitchen, all black galabeyya and jangling gold bangles. She takes your wrist in her vise-like grip and sits you down to eat.
Your mother-in-law loves you is an Egyptian expression. It’s said to a guest who arrives, unexpectedly, as food is being served – a jovial invitation to join the meal.
It’s just what I love about language.
