So far I have three words..
Inshalla-god willing. Which you are supposed to insert into just about every sentence. (I will now use it each time Christine asks me if I am going to take the trash out. If something doesn’t happen the Egyptians think it just wasn’t God’s will and so I will explain that to her).
Shoukrun-thank you (although every time I say it someone corrects me)
La’ Shoukrun- no thank you.
Now, heading out to find the local ATM (they tell me that it’s behind the mosque and in front of the McDonalds) I ask the Hotel to teach me “I understand”. . It’s something like Ana Fahim and I wander off muttering it but by the time I get to the local bookstore to ask about the ATM again I have forgotten the word and so the store manager teaches me all over again. Now I head out across the square toward the ATM, which is now in sight, but I have forgotten the word again and I am muttering something like Ana Hadrin, which I know isn’t right. I am accosted by a tout selling something or other and so I divert his attention by asking him to teach me the word for “I understand”. He doesn’t have much English but we get by and I have the word again but this time it costs me an Egyptian Pound for his trouble. Perhaps now, after a month in Egypt, I have four Arabic words.
Dinner at the Hotel Nefertiti. There’s a ship of the desert on my plate, (camel meat), I think I will go vegetarian from now on for a while.
No beer can be sold by the Hotel and we have had no wine or hard liquor since Greece and there is none in sight in our next stop, India, but we are getting used to it.
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