Egypt, part 1.

The last few days have been almost as exciting for me as when I was watching the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Back then, I was in college, and my friends and I would stay up for hours watching the events of Eastern Europe as they unfolded. As first Tunisia and then Egypt removed their strongmen presidents through peaceful protests, I wondered what country would be next, and if the Middle East would be finally moving towards democracy.

But this has nothing to do with the story I'm about to tell.

When I was living in Damascus, my school hosted a soccer tournament for a number of the private American schools in the Eastern Mediterranean area. Parents and teachers were asked to host players and coaches, and so I volunteered. A coach from Cairo was assigned to me - a man of South African heritage who grew up in England after his parents left due to their anger over apartheid (they were white, but couldn't believe a government would do that).

Expat was a great guy - a few years older than me, he had lived in Egypt for years. He never met a challenge he didn't like, never found himself in a situation that made him uncomfortable. I've told a story about him before...this is when we met.

The teams arrived Wednesday night, and were leaving on Sunday. On the first night, I met him at school, and we walked over to my house, about a half mile from school. Once there, he dropped off his luggage, freshened up, and we went to the Headmaster's apartment, who was hosting an event for all visitors. On the way over, Expat told me he had been to Damascus, and wanted to hang out in town. He said he knew a couple places.

I had lived there for two months. I only knew the British Embassy bar (The Pig & Whistle), and the Australian Bar (The Roo Bar). I only socialized with Americans, and I was basically boring. Expat, who didn't even live in the city, and could barely speak Arabic (he understood it better), was going to show me around the city of three million. An hour into our appearance at my boss' place, we left. There were four of us in two - he and his assistant coach, a cute girl in her mid-20s, myself and another teacher from my school. We grabbed a taxi, and Expat said to the driver, "Take us somewhere seedy."

He then said something in Arabic, which I don't think meant "seedy", but got the idea across. He took us to a part of town I never visited again. Dark, litter on the streets, faded signs. Seedy.

We walked into a strip club. In Damascus. In the Middle East.

The working girls weren't that cute, but they did serve beer, the first time I had seen it outside the embassy bars. Expat wasn't impressed. "We need someplace seedier." We left, and hopped into another cab after getting general directions from one of the bouncers at the club. By the end of the night (by which I mean about an hour before I was scheduled to teach), we were in a strip club with Ukrainian girls who had hit every branch in the ugly tree, girls who may have had some chromosomal issues. The girl with us was a good sport, talking to the other teacher from Damascus. I cringed every time I had to touch something in the club, afraid I was going to get every type of hepatitis.

Expat's eyes gleamed. He loved the seediness of it.

The next night was Thursday night, where the regulars went to The Roo Bar. But Expat decided we were going instead to the Damascus Sheraton, host to Lufthansa's sponsorship of a Oktoberfest Party. I had gone with some Americans a couple days earlier, where we indulged in German food and beer (at about $60 a ticket), and the wild evening included a dance with our school's 60 year old guidance counselor. Just a crazy evening (insert sarcastic tone here).

The event was sold out, and had been for weeks. Expat didn't care - he figured he could talk our way in.

And so he did. At first the Syrians at the front argued, but Expat wasn't taking no for an answer, and we wandered in. There were about four hundred people there, seated along long tables, as if in a Munich beer garden. Against the far wall was the British Embassy staff, and two tables closer to us were members of the Dutch Embassy. In between sat a large contingent of Syrian families, parents hoping to introduce their children to the better aspects of foreign culture. I recognized some of the British from their bar, so Expat and I made our way over to them.

They were shit faced. Three sheets to the wind. Completely trousered. Expat and I attempted to catch up.

It was during this evening that I got to know The Diplomat and Fat Bastard, two of my favorite people in Damascus. One of them that night decided it was no longer Oktoberfest; instead, it was a Greek wedding, and began launching plates in the wall behind him, where they shattered upon impact. Waiters rushed over to clean up the mess, but realized the futility of stopping what was happening. After the fifth or sixth plate they stopped coming around. Not long after, the British Embassy workers tired of breaking plates, and decided to start a food fight with the Dutch Embassy. It started innocently enough with some pieces of bread, and the Dutch laughingly retaliated...and then it got serious.

I can still see in my mind this particular image: as things were flying back and forth, there was a Syrian family of eight stuck in the middle of the mayhem. The father, immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit, faced the Dutch table, his back to the British. He was unwilling (or unable) to confront the participants, so he kept his kids' heads low and instructed them to finish their meal as quickly as they could. His face was down towards his meal, and he shoveled food into his mouth almost nonstop...all the while, soup dripped off his left shoulder down his back.

An hour later, the oompah band was strutting their German music, and The Diplomat's wife and decided it would be a good time to do the tango down the entire length of the table. We were drunk; the table cluttered with broken plates and bits of food. Somehow, not only did we make it the entire length and back, but we were damned good as well. In the two years I stayed in Syria, The Diplomat's Wife and I attempted to do the tango again and again...and each time, we were nearly as good as we were that night.

After the Oktoberfest party was finished, Expat and I wound up staying out until late night again. I managed to get four hours sleep in before wandering over to school (Friday was the weekend), where I watched some of the soccer tournament. After Expat's team was done, he took me to a college party in Damascus - I have no idea how he found it, but we stumbled upon the university that hosted foreign students who wanted to study Arabic - the Ifiad. At that party, I met a number of American, British, French students who were in Damascus for the school year. We didn't stay all that long - Expat wound doing his own variation of a Scottish céilí with a young girl and flung her into the chandelier, shattering it (she wasn't injured) and the hosts were a bit angry. My memory's a bit hazy by this point, but I'm pretty sure we wound up someplace seedy that evening.

That weekend changed my life in Damascus. I became good friends with the The Diplomat and Fat Bastard, and the next week I met Filthy, the boyfriend of the girl who had hit the chandelier. These three became some of my closest friends in Damascus, and I remain in touch with them today.

Expat went back to Cairo that Sunday, and I told him I owed him a return visit. "I welcome the challenge."

And so he did - that March, I went to Egypt for the first time in my life to pay him back for the lack of sleep he caused during his stay. It wasn't a fair fight...he was ready. And I fell in love with Cairo.