Wasting Away

“You have to eat some food from this world or else you’ll disappear. Don’t worry it won’t turn you into a pig. Chew it and swallow.”
-Haku, Spirited Away

It’s always nice to have people notice us and comment on changes in our appearance. A coworker asks if we have been working out. A classmate says she likes our new haircut. These comments of recognition confirm our friendships, boost our self confidence and reassure us that we exist.

But sometimes these exchanges are less flattering. For example, in the middle of an art critique session when the teacher stops class to say, “What is wrong with you? You look terrible, I mean really terrible. I think you are not eating, yes? You need to be eating, I mean you look really awful, like unhealthy awful. Doesn’t Cole look unhealthy?”

This sort of comment could probably be dismissed. Art teachers are eccentric. This one has often commented about his erratic sleep schedule. He has bags under his eyes, and his skin, despite his being Arab, is pasty. You don’t have to trust health advice given by people with pasty skin, do you? Unfortunately, you do have to trust sweet, veiled engineering TAs. If anyone is grounded and has your best interests at heart it is an architectural engineering TA. They are like God’s messengers on Earth.
So, when TA Mina seeks you out in your architecture studio and says, “Do you need anything? Is there any way I can help? You are looking really thin. I think you have lost a lot of weight. Do you find time to eat? I know you are very busy but you really have to eat. If there is anything I can do just let me know.” you know that this is not a fluke comment. Neither is it a confirmation of friendship or an ego booster. At least you still exist—that feels good—but for how much longer.

Oh… there is a knocking at the door. That must be dinner. I should go.

A Pandemic We Can Get Behind

I first heard the news from Sam. I will always remember where I was—sitting on the couches in the library reading Cracking the LSAT by The Princeton Review—when the news came. The swine flu pandemic had touched the American University in Cairo.

Over the past year the Egyptian government has done everything in its power to ward off the specter of swine flu. Much of Egypt’s pig population—owned chiefly be Egypt’s poor Coptic citizens like the zabbaleen garbage collectors—were rounded up by the government and massacred. A friend of mine recounted how he was driving through one of the poorer districts on the outskirts of Cairo, and he got stuck behind a slow moving microbus. A long line of cars had built up and people were honk and yelling their requests for the obnoxious obstruction to be removed. The microbus bumped and groaned through the dirt road and suddenly the side door popped open and slid wide. Plump little pink pigs tumbled forth into the road. My friend said that people freaked. I pictured Mercedes and BMW crashing into each other in an attempt to avoid the pig avalanche. It turns out the opposite was true. The Mercedes and the BMWs revved their engines and tried to run down the pigs. It was like the drivers feared that, unless killed, the pigs, like zombies, would attack, smashing through windshields, ripping out throats and gorging themselves on human flesh, spreading the plague. By night fall millions of mutant humans and pigs would roam the streets of Cairo competing for the few remaining food sources.

In addition to seeming incredibly overblown, many people feel the swine flu scare in Egypt is highly politico-religious. In a part of the world where the pig is seen as unclean, taboo, forbidden, and is only owned by the Christian minority, it understandable that as a Coptic citizen one would feel directly targeted by the government’s pig eradication measures.

These are the things I hear about—pigs tumbling from microbuses, outraged Christians—but it has never affected me personally till now. When I say that the swine flu pandemic has touched AUC I don’t mean that students are dying in the hallways or that the dorms have been quarantined. From what I hear there have in fact been 7 cases of swine flu at AUC, but none of the students were seriously affected. No, I am not even referring to a physical pandemic. Rather I mean the pandemic of pandemonium.

Yesterday, by order of the Egyptian government, the American University in Cairo was shut down until October 4th. Our two day Eid break, has just turned into two weeks. It is highly inconvenient, teachers and students alike are frustrated, the semester will be seriously set back, and I know I will feel wretched when the zombie invasion begins, but sitting at my computer, on a Thursday afternoon, having slept in till 1:30PM, with the LSAT exam in a week and a half, I can sincerely state, this is one pandemic I can get behind!

TAKE A NUMBER

The office is packed when I walk in. It might be any office, Egypt Air, LinkDSL, but that is unimportant. What matters is that the well swept floor and flat screen TV mounted on a central pillar do little to disguise the underlying shabbiness of the establishment. What matters is heat which drips down men’s spines, discolors a plaid or paisley arm pit, or pools in a crotch. What matters is the hunger nestled in each belly, just below the religious guilt and social pressure. What matters is that the office is packed when I walk in.

A man indicates towards a black dispenser, a bureaucratic toilet paper roll used to wipe away fecal inefficiency and foul individuality. I take a number. I am 0664. A chime calls my attention to a license-plate-sized digital display mounted on the wall behind the counter. The display says 0550.

I stare at the display. A minute goes by, and then five. A few people enter. A few people leave. A chime. 0551. One man leaves. I do some quick calculations in my head, and follow him out. As an afterthought I grab another toilet paper number as I walk through the door. I am 0664, and I am 0667. My heart swells a little at this act of rebellion. I feel more dynamic and alive, and with that I go to run errands. I come back after the shadows have shrunken and shriveled in the ascending sun and then begun to grow again. The display says 0621. I head back out for a walk to pounder why others did not simply do the same. When I return again the display says 0658, and I go inside to wait.

Twenty minutes go by, and then the chime summons me to the polished, plywood, Promised Land. I approach the counter and show the gate keeper my number, 0664, and he nods his approval. Pleasantries are exchanged. Explanations are exchanged, and finally funds are exchanged. As I head out the door I look around.

A dusty, potbellied man on my left picks his nose. He does not hide it, neither does he flaunt it or dare those around him to meet his gaze saying, “Yeah, I’m picking my nose in public. Want to fight about it?!” It is a simple act. He picks his nose. In another dimension he might have coughed or tied his shoe.

Next to the dusty, potbellied man sits a dusty old man. The dusty old man does not pick his nose. He does not cough or tie his shoe or do anything accept stare at the ground and wonder what he is doing, an old man, in this crowded office with a distant number in his pocket. He was not there when I first arrived. He was not there when I came back from running errands. It is a very distant number.

I reach into my right, front jeans pocket, down below my tattered wallet, pull out a crumpled piece of toilet paper and hand it to him. Instinctively, he reaches up and takes it. For a moment he looks confused, not quite sure what his body has done in his mind’s absence. Then, he looks annoyed, perhaps wondering why some rude American kid has just handed an old man his pocket detritus. I smile at the old man. I am myself again, and he is 0667. In this office in, this moment it is a name with more sway than any held by old aristocracy. I walk out into the street. Behind me a chime. 0666.