Hear no weevil, see no weevil

My husband loves Weetbix Multigrain. He has at times begged visitors to bring packets from Australia, but they are heavy, hard to carry, and his supplies are getting low. I tease him about it from time to time. He would have given our children a very hard time if they had insisted, in postings in Syria and Malaysia and Jordan, on having a particular cereal. Here he is so fond of these that he has been known to hide the packs in the back of our storage cupboards so visitors will not find them and eat them - even if they have just carried them out from Australia.

He is down to the last pack. He only has these because I had tucked them so well into the back of the deep cupboard under the toaster at one point with about five in the house some months ago - that he could not find them and opened one of his last new packs. They were forgotten - and unknown to me - started to grow.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that I had found his Weetbix - an almost full pack with only a few missing. He was thrilled. I noticed he was using them - they were left on the top bench (no visitors just now) and the pack was slowly going down.

Today he confessed. They are infested with weevils. He said that it got a bit hard by the third morning to make himself eat them with so much wriggling going on. I cannot believe he ate them wriggling for three mornings.

So - he microwaved the packet.

"It wasn't a good idea," he said in a thoughtful way, "it rather brought out the flavour of the weevils in a most unfortunate way."

For two more mornings he had struggled with his favourite cereal, microwaved and now strangely leathery, reeking of steamed weevil, and with small bodies floating - all sizes of grub, and a few crunchy brown ones at the beetle stage, absolutely determined not to throw out something he loved.

This morning the conversation started as I was bemoaning the difficulty of deciding what to eat for breakfast. Ahmed, our lovely Egyptian chef, had chopped a mango for me yesterday, but I found it after dinner and ate the better bits out of the bowl. Egyptians do not mind mangoes that are dark and transparent when you cut them open - and almost at the slithering-out-of-the skin stage. I like them firm and golden and opaque. This was a compromise mango - some of the outside was firm and golden, and I ate these bits and even shared them with Bob. I tasted one of the dark slimier bits and didn't like it.

This morning I mentioned that it was a pity the rest of the mango was not good as it would be nice for breakfast. I commented that we had put it back in the frig but I would chuck it out and tell Ahmed not to bother with mangoes at that stage as neither of us liked them. I was almost out the door when Bob said "Don't throw it out."

I turned and asked why not as I knew he didn't like it that way either.

He said, "the rotting mango drowns the taste of weevils quite well."

So - this morning, he finally confessed, he had eaten leathery Multigrain Weetbix strongly flavoured with weevil, with rotten mango to drown the taste! What is worse - he was prepared to do the same tomorrow when the mango was worse.

And to think I was complaining that I didn't know what I felt like for breakfast!

So for those who think ambassadors live a life of luxury - I thought this might change your mind. Mind you - not all ambassadors are like mine.

Long time no write

I have been away for so long that every time I think about my blog I feel guilty.

I haven't even really been consistently away.

I had a trip to London and Birmingham that took in "We Will Rock You" and a visit to the Tate Modern. Both were fantastic - the musical had perhaps the worst-ever story line but great music. I once heard someone claim that every CD left in a car (or perhaps in those days it was tapes?) would morph into Queen's Greatest Hits. The Tate Modern seemed full of tongue-in-cheek art - art that seemed to remove that element of awe and mystery - art you walked on, art that you became a part of - art that involved the viewer while thumbing its nose at convention.

I went to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham and it was the most exciting quilt show I have been to in a long time. The hall was full of special exhibits. While it was also the first quilt show in ages where I had no formal role I managed to meet a lot of friends. A new quilt for me - Hashim - was on show as one of a group show from the Kuwait Textile Arts Association.

He was popular. I think there were several marriage proposals and some that seemed to be willing so skip anything formal. One trio wandered past and one lady said "He could throw me across the camel saddle any time he likes and take me off to his tent."

Her friend added, "Yes, and I wouldn't care what he did with me there."

I was just a little concerned for my nice and very conventional Egyptian friend, and quickly put in, "I have made him look a bit younger than he is - the leaf pattern on his beard is supposed to look gray and he woudl be in his fifties."

"That is not a problem," said the third. "There are little blue pills if he looks like flagging."

I have dithered about this - but photos were no permitted in most of the show so I am not putting up the images I am tempted to show.

The movies on the Egypt Air flight home were bad enough to be hilarious. At one stage in a really appalling Egyptian soap - which I think had been fed through Babel Fish for the subtitles in English - the hero clutched his chest and said "I love you from my hair tips to my foot fingers."

I came back to Cairo and worked and worked. I had quilts to finish for a show in Australia in November - a whole body of work - and I have already blogged the first one so might keep the others quiet. I had to finish and send my Journal Quilt for Houston and make some new samples for classes there. I am excited about these classes. I have taught in the US before but it was a single long class, so there were very few people to talk about my teaching. I have not really tried to break into the US market - but this is just what I woudl like to do now.

I had about a clear week before my first visitors arrived. These were an exciting stream of visitors - a string of eight textile friends from my quilting world - and while most were Australians one was from America. I had so looked forward to showing them the things I loved here. There was really only a two day overlap and I used this for a White Desert trip. It was all a complex logistical exercise and involved a lot of booking of cars, and trips to the Pyramids. We threw in a couple of extra Australians at one point, and another pair came in on the heels of the big group. At one point every bedroom in the house was full.

There is something so special about watching a friend looking at something you love and realising that it is having the same effect on them.

They went in various directions and so did I - to France with Mohamed Sadek for the tentmaker exhibition. Mohamed is a stitcher by training but has almost given it up as his knees and eyes have problems and he was warned that he would either have to stop or 'pay the tax'. However he had almost come to Australia and had stepped back to let his friend Ayman have the place instead. I felt I owed him - but that was not the main reason for his selection.

Politics in the Khan Khayamiya makes the political activities in Lebanon look like a run-through of My Fair Lady. The pressure for a stitcher to push me in favour of work from only his friends and family, and away from his rivals, is almost laughable at times. Because Mohamed Sadek is out of the current Khayamiya circle he is universally popular. This meant that he could negotiate for for me with the men I chose, and without suspicion. Better still - I liked him. He is funny, has a great sense of humour, is sensible and practical, and his English is good enough for me to know that we would not have problems I could not sort out. Better still, he is a man very much in love with a new wife, and almost a butt of humour in the Khan because of it.

It sounds silly in a western context - but it is important in Egypt that my reputation stay clean and traveling with one man is a risky thing to do. At least with this man those in the Khan knew that nothing odd was going on.

We had been invited to Patchwork Carrefour in Alsace - in the tiny string of towns of the Val d'Argent. They had generously sponsored an exhibition of work for sale, and I had chosen a marvelous collection (see some of it a few entries back). I had been concerned that a good Moslem, in Ramadan, would be working in a French Catholic church, and I was not sure how Mohamed would take this. I wrote and asked the organisers if they had a problem with us hanging a piece of Islamic Calligraphy.

No - no problem as the church was not an active church any longer.

I talked to Mohamed about it and he said that religion was in your heart, not in a building.

You see - I told you he was sensible.

The town was exquisite - Ste Marie aux Mines is nestled between bright green and verdant hills with picturesquely spotted black and white cows walking the ridges. There are pine forests and other lighter forests - possibly beech? Flowers filled window boxes and spilled over in the loose tangles of the end of summer.

A small stream ran through the very centre of town.

We were booked into a small local hotel which was almost like staying in a family home - complete with stone winding stairs to an attic floor three flights up. Mohamed was showing signs of waiting for the boy who would carry the luggage when I broke the news that we would take our own. That was the first shock.

Then the family Labrador - a big black dog - wandered out. I thought Mohamed was going to climb on my shoulders. He just could not believe that a dog would live in the house.

This is a serious problem for a Moslem. Egyptians are also among the most devout Moslems so any ruling tends to be carried out to the letter. Mohamed coped bravely but after a day the signs of pressure were starting to show and the dog was picking up on his distress and growling whenever he entered the house. It was earnestly explained to me that if a dog touched him with its mouth or tongue it meant he could not pray for forty days - and Ramadan - the most holy of all months - was about to start. I contacted our sponsors and said we needed to find him a place without a dog.

He moved into a small room above the local dentist - with a lovely lady hostess who liked to talk. Unfortunately Mohamed spoke only Arabic and English and she spoke only French, but she followed him and talked to him regardless, to his utter mystification.

Next day we had almost hung the show.

It was just a little disconcerting to get to the church and find people stepping in to pray - and lighting candles, and we almost dropped an appliqué piece in the holy water when trying to hang it - so it had a distinctly wet corner.

We had lined up work on the pews and it was a good idea to see how the colour worked. People from the municipality helped and the work went up quickly with only a few changes.

We opened. Mohamed wore the Egyptian galabeyiah and a small cap traditional in Upper Egypt. He was fasting - so working from 8.30 am till 7.00pm meant such a long day.

Mohamed the Pied Piper

He drew crowds. we had hordes - perhaps as many as 17,000 through the exhibition. It was interesting to see a Moslem sitting quietly stitching in front of the altar of a very gorgeously decorated Christian Church.

The reaction to the show was amazing - as it was in Australia, though I have decided that the French do not buy as easily. An Australian who likes something will buy it just to own it. The French want to know exactly where it will fit, and that the colours are exactly right.

This was tragic in some ways as I have been encouraging the workers to make the best and most beautiful work they can and they have responded with stunning pieces. Unfortunately what sold was the smaller and cheaper work - so that is what they will now make, and the best will be folded away and not repeated.

He was deeply unpopular with his landlady for filling the (shared) bathroom - all of it - with three inches of water in the usual process of washing before prayers. I broached the subject over dinner and he argued that it was the Moslem way. I pointed out that he could sit with his feet in the bathtub, not out of it, to wash his feet. He said again that it was the Moslem way. I said he didn't have to unplug the shower hose to use it outside the bath. He said again that it was their way!

There is no drain in the floor in French bathrooms so water from the three inch deep pool that had been the bathroom floor drained into the ceiling of the French dentist's surgery below, and dripped on the first patient of the day. The patient said he had water in his mouth. "Yes," said the dentist, "From my spray". "No," said the patient, "from the ceiling".

The landlady kept saying in amazement "Comme la piscine!!!" - like a swimming pool. Again and again as she followed me around the exhibition as I fielded people wanting to know prices and sizes of the work. I was starting to feel somewhat stressed and my effusive apologies in terrible French did not seem to be helping. Intermittently she approached Mohamed and the magic words "Comme la Piscine" emerged periodically from the long streams of fast French. He answered in Arabic. I intervened saying that she didn't understand him as she didn't speak Arabic. "I don't speak French either", said Mohamed with irrefutable logic, "and I speak Arabic better than English. "And," he added, "she does not understand my English so why not Arabic?"

She also complained that he left on the lights, he left open the windows, and he slept on the bed - not in it - so no wonder he was freezing.

Dijanne Cevaal won a prize for one of her stunning quilts and it was lovely to see her there.

One quiet brag - I am in the last stages of setting up a first textile tour of Syria and Egypt. This will be marketed first in Australia but there might be more! I am really thrilled with it - it does the usual Nile Cruise and other things like it - but so much that is right off the usual tourist track. I will put details on my blog of this too when I have a moment to breathe.

I had a few days back after our return to pay off the men with the money they had earned, and recover a little.

And that is it for now - but just to warn you - since this trip I have also been to Libya and Tunisia! More later.

Paper Chase

I have been trying to organise the work from the Tentmaker's Khan to go to France.

I had to get a piece of paper called a EUR 1. My lovely and helpful French contact said it would mean we did not have to pay customs duties for work to be sold, and it would be at the Chamber of Commerce.

I tried to find it on the internet. Three sites, three addresses. I asked the friend who is the very efficient receptionist at the embassy to help me. She found an address, and a phone number, and the fact that women finished at 3.15 pm and men at 3.30.

I organised a car and headed for the place. The piece of paper gave a number on Falaki Square and I felt quite pleased with myself that I actually knew where this was.

I found the Chamber of Commerce. The day was not too hot. It was perhaps 34 at ten am but we had a bout of over forty a week ago and I was almost comfortable.

That was perhaps before three flights of stairs. I found myself staring a a lot of foot high Arabic lettering in brass. It was very beautiful against a cream marble wall but I didn't have a clue what is said. At least - I could say the work aloud to myself, but I had no idea what it meant. At either side of the stairwell long corridors stretched into a seeming infinity - possible aided by rather grotty and fly spotted mirrors. I had not seen that they were mirrors till I wondered why the woman walking down the corridor had such similar clothes.

I wandered for while and realised that all the occupants of the offices were studiously looking elsewhere as I walked past. I walked to a door and tapped on the frame. Two people looked up from their conversation. I asked about the EUR 1. They shook their heads, but one then walked me to another office.

A nice and older man in one of a circle of desks seated me, offered me tea, and took out a ledger. I rather assumed, as he flicked through it, that he would pull out the form and hand it to me, and I would thank him and leave. I was wrong. He took nearly five minutes, then pulled a sheet of paper towards him and slowly and laboriously started to write.

Ten minutes later it was done. He had copied one letter at a time. I had assumed - still - that this was to do with the form I needed. It wasn't - it was an address for another place to go to where I could get my EUR 1 form. He had written it carefully in English which he obviously did not speak - and I was sorry as my driver of the day was Egyptian.

I called my driver who had had to park a long way away and we headed for the next location. The address was clear enough, but when we got there - it could have been any part of two or three blocks. I walked loops around blocks - and it was now heading up for 36 or 37. I found the office space eventually on the side of an alley and with a grotty desk at the bottom of steep stairs. He immediately walked me outside the building and around the block again. We entered on the other side, and after some argument with another guard at another grotty desk we walked three flights of stairs in a humid and hot building and down enough corridor for me to realise that obviously he should not have bothered walking me around the building as we were now back on the original side.

I was shown into an office full of women where men in the corridor milled around a window with a cashier's slit.

It was really bizarre. There was not one thing on any desk. It was like an empty classroom without the clutter around the edges. Nothing on the yellowish-creamish-greenish dirty walls. It was HOT and airless and all were wearing heavy perfume so it was like an onslaught of ten different sorts of rock music, but olfactory, not auditory. There were no phones in the room or on the desks. No books. Not even ledgers - and these huge heavy books are loved in Egyptian offices and are everywhere. No fans. No computers. One woman walked slowly to the window, spoke briefly to a man behind it, took a piece of paper from him, then walked back to her desk, took a plastic biro from the drawer, and proceeded to fill out the form.

I was asked to sit beside a lady in pink with very large costume jewelery on almost any part of her that could support it. She was painting her nails. She looked up and said in Arabic " Two minutes please," and continued on the nails. I was a bit staggered that she could not paint nails and talk at the same time. She was very carefully leaving white areas over the moons and with scarlet polish it looked as if the nails had just grown out.

I can see this being a long post. After five minutes I was given a Eur1. The invoice was demanded and I told her that I did not bring one as I would fill out the sheet at home. Come back tomorrow she said, with Arabic. It seemed a big ask to become fluent overnight, but I think she was telling me to bring a friend. I had actually understood almost everything she had said - the problem had been trying to tell her what I was taking and I had covered that by ringing the stitcher who is accompanying me so he could explain.

This piece of paper petrified me. I had printed out a thing on the internet that explained how to fill it out - all five pages of instructions for three sheets of the form. There was a large area explaining that a correction made the form null and void. My friend in France who is our sponsor had said I had to itemise each piece of stitching on the form - and there were sixty to go in an area only twelve centimetres each way.

That night I typed invoices, made up an accurate packing list for each suitcase and totaled columns of figures. There will be some very happy men if we sell all this work. I did the maths on the commissions with the help of my Southern Cross quilter friends.

I got to bed at 4.30 am. By this stage I had looked at the form and decided I was too weary to tackle something that needed absolute concentration. I set the alarm for 6.30am.

Next morning, with Mohamed as my 'Arabic', I fronted up again. Mrs Nails scanned my carefully foldered and typed Invoice - with 60 itemised pieces and their descriptions (nine pages) - and then the form. She asked what the transport was. I said we would use a shipping company but it was to be organised from France, and I did not know which one. She wrote - in English and very badly in a great scrawl "by passenger in airplane".

Now we had just explained in Arabic that this was not the case and I expostulated! She crossed it out in large black strokes. She said it did not matter that she had just crossed out my carefully written form as it wasn't right anyway - it had to be done like everyone else, on a computer. I pointed out that a form with many small boxes on both sides all over the form and with small spaces for words was hard to set up on a computer. She said I could use an old typewriter.

I told her I did not have one.

She shrugged and said "There are many Internet cafes - they will do it. Anywhere!"

Now at this point I knew she had never used a computer because what she was lightly telling me to do was very hard - especially for me.

We gave up and left.

Next morning I went in, again with Mohamed, and presented her with a PERFECT form, done on the computer, and with the shipping company filled in. I was so proud - I had done it with multiple photocopies for checking, and holding up the printed test sheets over the 'real' form with the light behind to see that everything would fit exactly. The space bar had worked overtime, I had adjusted margins - I was thrilled.

She handed it back and said - "you have to do it again with the value less than 500 Euros".

Now there was no way I would lie about the value. This decreed the insurance value and I would need every cent I had listed to pay back the men in the Khan if the shipment was destroyed or missing.

She pointed out that if I wanted such a high value I had to go to another office way out at the airport and everyone else just changed the value. She could only authorise a small parcel - and maybe I needed a different form. I stuck to my guns and fought this one as the shipper in France was clear and specific and I knew he would be right. I was getting annoyed as I could see our time sliding away.

She shrugged, sat down, and took chewing gum from her handbag. The interview was over and I was a nuisance.

In the hurry to finish the form and paperwork and leave the house, and in my scrambled and exhausted state I had left my mobile and my ID card behind and could not go to the airport without my ID. The traffic was building up and the airport is a long way away. I go to England in the early hours of Saturday morning and Friday everything is closed. I had hoped to have the work collected on Thursday, and it was already too late to drive the hour-long drive to the airport and be at the office there by 2.00pm. It closed at 3.00, but they said they were busy and I had to be there at 2.00 to be served.

I had had an interim drama on my return to the house when I found that my house guests had been horribly gypped out of a LOT of money. They had gone to the bank to get the balance out as they had to pay the man who was calling to collect it - $680 for five vials of perfume oil. I was horrified and when they went to their room for a nap I went to the guard box and took back the money they had left, telling the guard to tell the man from the shop to come and see me.

It is all another story - but to cut it short - I was frustrated and angry about two very annoying days and that man really copped it! He was only the messenger so I rang the shop and blasted the owner too. My friends were charged almost six hundred dollars too much for what they bought. I kept the extra money and we handed it back. Bob will talk to them tomorrow and we may bring in the police. Worse - they were taken there by a guide from the museum called Moses who probably pocketed half the money.

This morning - early - Mohamed and a trusty driver and I went to the airport.

It took five offices! It took seven separate conversations and five hours. I rang France once and they rang me back once. Each conversation was grave and took ages.

Once office had a wall of men's backs about seven deep along a counter. Mohamed took one look and said "I will go". I said I wanted to try it my way. I drew myself to full height (not a lot at any time) and started excusing myself clearly and briskly in British English and they fell back like the parting of the Red Sea. Mohamed kept muttering "I never saw you like this. I am following a different woman."

It was not much use - it was the wrong office. I said that at least I was seeing Cairo and the men laughed.

At office number four we fell into conversation with two very nice men with very high piles of forms. At first they were not really wasting time talking to us as the seven women in the office were sitting around a table eating bread and ful (hot broad beans cooked to a spicy sludge) and drinking tea from large mugs. The conversation took twenty five minutes and I only followed a little, but the gist was that the shipper should do these forms, not us. "Look", said one man, expansively circling his arm, "how many ambassador's wives do you see?"

We decided to find the shipper only to find the numbers we had been given did not work. We had brought the cases as the shipper's address was at the airport. The mobile number worked, but the man on the other end was apologetic but not working for the company now. I rang France. My friend sounded worried but promised to ring us back. I also asked him to ask his contacts to warn the office that we were bringing the cases.

He rang back, we rang the office, and were setting off for Heliopolis with only me a bit concerned that we had been told to leave the cases at the airport branch.

Then as we turned through the car park I saw - just out of the corner of my eye - a neat and tidy and freshly painted office on a long string of grotty ones - and a sign which looked like the agency we were looking for. I insisted we loop back - and walked in to the smell of fresh coffee, and a young man with a delightful smile saying "Can I help you?"

It was like coming home after a long journey. He took over, the forms were done, we were given marvelous coffee, and he inspected and whisked away the cases. He sent my driver off to buy padlocks, and checked that they would go on the cases.

I could have kissed him.

At ten tonight the way bills arrived and all is well and wonderful.

We go to the Camel market in the morning, and will see our friends from the wedding and henna party a few weeks back. Then I have some work to do. Then we will pack. Then we have a party to farewell a loved Embassy member who will be missed.

Then - we go to England and I will be in Birmingham.

Back in ten days.

One Very Small Egyptian

I have a dear friend in the tentmaker souq. He married last year, and is glowingly happy. He is a big and humorous man with the groove in the front teeth that indicates a love of the seeds so many Arabs adore. I often breakfast with them in front of the rug shop on Ta'amia sandwiches and mint tea or kakadeh. The sandwiches are always delicious and the company is fun.

All this year I have followed his wife's pregnancy with odd snippets from my friend. I have sympathised with her lack of sleep and her discomfort in the heat. I have laughed at my friend's descriptions of her cravings for odd foods, and wondered if I could offer help without offense when he detailed the vitamins her doctor had ordered in obvious concern. I have given him bits of advice about looking after her from time to time and marveled at how tender and solicitous he is.

She went to the hospital to be checked on Monday and they kept her in, saying the baby was imminent and the wrong way around. He rang me sounding worried next day saying things were not easy and he had gone back to work but he was grave and obviously worried. He said that all would be well as she was in the hands of Allah.

His best friend rang two days ago to tell me the baby had died. My friend had to choose between his wife and his son. I spoke to him and he was deeply sad. He said that God had given him this boy and he had taken him away.

He did not see the baby and did not want to.

I cannot decide if his deep belief in the justice of his God is distressing or comforting. I want to rage at the sky - this is a lovely lovely man and would have been a wonderful father.

If anyone reading this knows something I could do that might help please put it in the comments! I know the process for a funeral, but this little Egyptian did not really live, and I do not think there will be a funeral. I want to help but am at a loss.

I cannot imagine his wife's misery. I feel so sad.

Stitch like an Egyptian 2

I spent a day in Khan Khayamiya on Saturday. With my friend Mohamed Sadek, who will come with me to France as a stitcher, I went from shop to shop to collect the work selected for the Exhibition at Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines.

As an indication of how hot '39 and humid' feels - I drank five cokes, three teas, two coffees and a large bottle of water. I don't much like coke, but it is always safe and hospitality is really a matter of honour so it is hard to refuse anyone.

All the work is painstaking hand appliqué. Some work is finer than others and the sizes vary. All the work is for sale in France. These are in numerical order from shop to shop - numbers allocated as they were collected - but they are not in the order they will be shown in.

And one REALLY big so you can see the details and the stitching - it is actually about 1.2 metres square.

If you have come so far you have done well. I know you will agree that this will be just spectacular.

Just for fun - my household team - the residence staff who helped with the photography on a baking hot roof - for four hours!!

Meet Gamal, Maria, and Ahmed