Seeking an outgoing woman in Aswan
Over 1, attacks on healthcare in Occupied Palestinian Territory since October. Meet girls for sex in other cities: Beach sex free in Bridge, Singles sex party in Nelson, Real amature wives fucking in Khon Kaen
Coming home to Cairo always starts with a lie, and this time was no exception. The price of a taxi from the airport dwindles with each stride taken past the exit doors of the baggage hall and the stale, harried officers who guard them; those nabbed by touts at the outset pay top dollar for a limousine service that features no limousines, while the real bargains are to be found out beyond the terminal building where the air is coarse and mucky and the night slams up hot against your skin.
You need a bit of guile to get there, though. My usual tactic is to chatter animatedly to no one on my mobile; I try and put on a real ensemble performance, all phatic fakery and apologetic grimaces to anyone who endeavours to catch my attention along the way. On this occasion, the aged Peugeot I ended up in was parked on a far-flung traffic island on the fringes of the airport, wedged between a rubbish bin and an ornamental tree.
The exterior was reassuringly scratched and bruised, and its dashboard was covered in plastic fruit and prayer beads and ornate tissue boxes crowned with nodding dogs shrink-wrapped in velour. Its front-left tyre had come to rest on a hunk of rubble, leaving the vehicle sitting at an erratic angle from the ground, swaying slightly in the gloom. The driver made me wait so that he could execute a synchronised shove down on the bonnet and prevent the whole thing tipping over as I climbed in.
He said he was sorry for the inconvenience. But of course these are the days when everything in Egypt is at an angle: nearly familiar, yet one step removed. Large fragments of plaster were scattered on the dusty floor of my flat.
Looking up, I realised they came from the kitchen and bathroom walls. No one thought it would ever happen, but it had and in my absence, the workmen, with no cigarettes or banter or small change to incentivise them, had understandably taken a route-one approach to installation: gouging massive holes out of the internal partitions to run pipes through to the boiler and oven, and simplifying their task further by repositioning these two appliances as close as possible to one another, which involved dragging the latter right across the kitchen door.