Back in Umm al-Dunya – By the Numbers

Umm al-Dunya, which means “Mother of the World”, is an old nickname for Cairo. One month ago, after unsuccessfully – and admittedly half-heartedly – trying to find work in London, I came running back to the city that has – for reasons I still don’t fully understand – become a kind of mother to me.

As I wrote in Notes on Returning to Cairo: The City Victorious, everything seems different… everything seems the same. Here’s a not-to-be-taken-too-seriously breakdown of my time here so far:

• Demonstrations attended: 2
• Demonstrations attended where I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there / whether I should even really have been there / whether I was an “imposter”: 2
• Interminable hours spent tramping around trying to find a house: 15
• Arguments with taxi drivers: 0
• Articles on Egypt written: 2
• Cairo tweet-ups attended: 1
• Different versions of backgammon played in one epic session: 4
• Questions fielded about what I think of New Egypt: 56
• Questions unsatisfactorily answered about what I think of New Egypt: 56
• Photographs taken: 4
• Photographs taken with my camera: 0
• Recollections that I despise politics: 30
• Heated group conversations about Egyptian politics: 19
• Heated group conversations about Egyptian politics where I’ve wished my “Revolutionary Arabic” was better: 7
• Meals cooked at home: 0
• Bowls of koshary (a meal I’m sure I remember hating) eaten: 5
• Angst-o-meter reading now it’s sunk in I’ve accepted a “proper job” involving an office and schedule and holiday allowance, on a scale of 1-10: 11
• Pyramids seen: 0
• Tourists seen: 22
• Tourists seen being herded around Midan Tahrir with simultaneously confused and apprehensive expressions on their faces: 22
• Insincere or downright inappropriate uses of the word “insha’allah” (as in “6 beers, God willing”): 5
• Number of Sufis asking for “a machine gun with which to kill those who have demolished shrines”: 1
• Poems written: 4
• Poems written that you will have to clamber over my dead body to read: 4
• Seconds it took before I decided to renew the all-out assault on my teeth by adding sugar to my tea: 0.5
• Head-smacking WTF am I doing here? moments: 6
• Hours spent trying to download Arabic script to my new magic phone: 9
• Arabic letters that now appear on my phone: 0
• Hours spent redesigning and fiddling with broken blog: 666 (OK, more like 80)
• Blog posts written: 1…

… Which brings me on to what I really wanted to say, which is this: I’ve been a horrible blogger. Hands up, I admit it, no excuses. But now I’m back in Cairo, I’m aiming to post a lot more often. And perhaps quite different stuff from before.

So – follow along, and tell me what you want.