Man About The House

At some point in the last four years, I've realized, I've turned into a thoroughly domesticated husband, almost along the lines of this game if rather puzzled-looking Kennedy-era paragon.

A Very Fond Farewell

Oh, my dears, it's a sad day hereabouts. We got some really rather dreadful news this morning.

A Fond Return

Bonus points to the clever Gentle Readers who know for 

what poem this charming illo was originally intended...

So it seems I'm getting better.  I won't say it's all been roses, but from the beginning one is told over and over again that every day brings a little improvement, and on the whole that's proving true.  The mental and physical fog that follows the sort of things I've been through is lifting, and my convalescence, as of this week, is heading in new directions.

How Are You Celebrating?

Today is World Toilet Day.  Are you, like Jeannie Sue here, doing the traditional Dance of Bubble-Action Exhilaration?

Moonlight and Roses...

...and dishwashing.

Morning in the Metroplis

It is overcast this morning in Cairo, the always dusty air just that much more so.  Given that we sit in the middle of some twenty million people, the flat is remarkably quiet (far more so than the Villa Muscato, in its green streets of gated compounds, oddly), and so mornings (me, as usual, up hours before the Mister) feel like an opportunity to slide slowly into the day. Given that today we are venturing downtown, to the very heart of Cairene bedlam, that's probably a good thing.

Things That Happen at Our House

At some point in the past month or so, Mrs. Galapatti-Da Silva had apparently had just about enough of our not finishing up with putting away the last of the Christmas decorations and decided that our tree topper needed to go for a ride.  Yes, she's a former South Africa Barbie dressed in a vintage tulle and silver lamé ballgown.  You got a problem with that?  As for the camel - believe me, you live in this area long enough, you end up with camels.  You live in Africa, you get masks; in Egypt, papyrus and scarabs.  The Sandlands, camels.  They come with the territory.

We use the "company" part of the Villa Muscato infrequently enough that I only noticed it today because I was padding around the house in an invalidish sort of way, as I'm feeling poorly.  It makes me wonder what other decorative innovations she's come up with that have escaped our notice...

File Under "Complaints, Litany of"

So sorry, mes amis, to have been such an utterly remiss host over the past two weeks. Life has been something of a trial, and I post the above snap, of the palms at our favorite seaside café, only so that neither you nor I lose the context that, horrid as some things have been, there are still consolations to be found.

To pick up where we left off, our little gathering all that while ago was in fact very pleasant indeed, and a much-needed moment of fun before things went to the usual place in the proverbial handbasket. Much good food was prepared and enjoyed, there was music and dancing and gossip, and it was a very late morning the day after. All to the good.

And then, as had been planned (but which I always manage to put at the far side of consciousness until it's actually happening), Mr. Muscato jetted off to be a good son and brother chez la famille. We get irritable on our own, Koko and I, and this time has proved no exception. Although this time around we have had very good reason.

First, I had to deal with a weeklong visit by Important People From The Home Office, a phrase that strikes fear in all of us who operate almost (and almost is the key word there) independently, but remain nonetheless part of a larger entity. They arrive, they expect to be entertained in High Style (but then get snarky about one's knowing how to do so, with dark hints of misuse of the corporate dime), they want to know why this is happening and why that isn't, they unnerve one's colleagues who are unused to such periodic descents from on high, they offend one's local network, they make a long series of almost entirely irrelevant, impractical, or utterly laughable recommendations, and then they fly off at 4:00 in the morning and expect you to take them to the airport. We were not amused.

And while that was happening, our irreplaceable Ermilia had to be replaced, at least for ten days, to deal with various issues back in her far-off home. I know this will stir not one scintilla of sympathy in something like 99.99% of readers, but really it's difficult to cope without her; I've been feeling very Georgie Pillson-deprived-of-Foljambe, even though before taking flight, Ermilia brought in a pinch-hitter in the form of a tiny, silent, and rather mysterious presence called Flordeliza who is at least keeping the dog happily walked.

And then I got the 'flu, or something equally nasty. Splitting headaches, among other joys too disgusting to enumerate.

And another (albeit comparatively, next to the floods of September, minor) plumbing disaster.

And so on, with lots that I've doubtless already put out of my mind. I have been sufficiently shaken by all this nonsense and negativity as to require getting an early jump on the approaching long holiday, the Sultanate having combined the observance of the Eid al Adha with the days off given for November 18's National Day (which in a curiosity of local life is never actually itself a holiday, reputedly so that everyone doesn't travel and leave no one to say Happy Birthday to the monarch).

Said early jump has meant a heavenly morning under those palm trees with a very content terrier, even in the trying presence at the next knot of sofas of a pair of terrifying blondined Russian housewife/socialites, chain-smoking impossibly long, thin, and vilely scented cigarettes whilst chatting intimately at top volume about, from what I could gather, the inadequacy of local luxury shopping and (inevitably) the iniquities of their husbands, neighbors, and servants. Nice to know that worldwide financial collapse is sparing some people...

So things do seem on the upswing. Having begun to regain my senses, I've organized a little treat, more of which doubtless anon, and for the next few days will try to enjoy life seul before that begins.

In any case, I hope to be a little bit less of an absence henceforth. Did you miss me?*

* Pardon the intrusive and recurring Francophony; I'm currently reading André Aciman's quite marvelous Out of Egypt, a memoir of his family's cosmpolitan existence in Farouk-era Alexandria, and finding that his dialogue is contagious...

On the Home Front

Of all the things that mark our lives as expatriates as different from the Way We Live Back Home – shopping in supermarkets that feature whole skinned goats and a singular paucity of pork chops; feeling daring when venturing out in shorts that skim the knee – few aspects of daily life stand out more profoundly than the presence of what Grandmother Muscato, until the end of her days, referred to as “The Help” (mostly in the “not in front of the” sense).

Bottom line: we have it. Most people, and certainly most expats in our little Sultanate, do (remembering that “most people,” in this context, is shorthand for “that subset of the population that does not include the thirty percent or so of the total population who are imported, underpaid, and absolutely vital manual laborers” – fodder perhaps for future, separate consideration). Some people simply have an expanded, daily or nearly so version of the twice-monthly cleaning lady that is still manageable for many back in the States; some (and the Villa Muscato falls in this category, with our much-valued Ermilia), have a “live in”; some grander households have two, or several, or more.

You’ll notice, perhaps, an absence of nouns here. What to call one’s household help is a matter of some debate. Maid or housemaid are probably the most common; I tend to prefer housekeeper, conjuring up as it does images of Hazel and Ann B. Davis. Other terms in common local parlance include housegirl, houseboy (rare, but not unheard of, and not used in the Fabulon sense), nanny, and even steward. And that’s not including the others who are part of some households: gardeners, drivers, butlers, laundresses, et al.

As Americans, we are still less comfortable than some of our European and Asian friends in having servants (and that’s what they are, really, however discomfiting the word). We don’t quite know how to behave, and while after a while you find yourself diving into the endless expat conversations about the help (litanies of complaints, mostly, and probably the most common topic of social chitchat after the heat), there is always about it a funny feeling.

We’re very spoiled. I try hard to remember that, and that in Real Life we wouldn’t have all the time that’s created by not cooking, doing laundry, scrubbing, ironing (and everything is ironed), dusting, vacuuming, polishing, and so much more. That time, to me at least, is the greatest luxury of the phenomenon of The Help. Time, which I wish I could say I use more fruitfully – that novel’s still not written, the paper still piles up - and, not at all to discount it, ease. Getting dressed? Throw open the cupboards and admire the pressed trousers, the neat piles of T-shirts, the shoes lined up just so. Throwing a party? Your role will consist of giving instructions and putting on music. You can, if you like, dabble in the Dalloway and arrange some flowers. At the end of evening, with just a few friends left, you kick your shoes off and make a show of attending to the last few glasses, feeling very domestic. When you go upstairs, the beds are made, the towels fresh, and the bathrooms spotless. In the morning, the kitchen sparkles and the only reminders of last night are the neat packages of leftovers in the fridge.

For every Mrs. Bridges aspect of all this, there’s a Mrs. Danvers side. You trade off luxury with privacy, and you get used to having someone know a lot about your dresser drawers, and the way you leave half-filled coffee cups about, and things generally personal, unadmirable, or both. You have to set boundaries, and rules, and distances; you have responsibility, both legally and morally, for the well-being of someone just as far from home as you (for all The Help is expat, too). You are participating, for better or worse, in a system that, however well you personally behave, also gives rise to the stories you hear about and read of a spectrum of injustices from minor mistreatment to horrendous abuse.

Of course, they are participating, too, Ermilia and her friends and all the thousands more. They have set out from their families and homes to this particular corner of the world. They send money back, to Sri Lanka and India and the Philippines, that makes it possible for children (sometimes theirs) to go school and for elderly parents to live decently. They live in small rooms at the tops of houses or tiny quarters tucked behind the kitchen. They do the work, and they likely gossip and complain about us just as much as we do about them. I admire them, really, a very great deal.

All in all it’s a funny thing, and every once in a while I get caught up short by the oddity of it. I think we’re good employers, Mr. Muscato and I, and properly grateful even as we grouse about lost buttons or misplaced nail clippers (which really can turn up in the oddest spots). I like to think Ermilia is as bemused by us as we are at her occasional eccentricities, and we all get along fairly well. But I don’t think I’ll ever be as comfortable with all of this as was Grandmother Muscato, who bullied and adored her Help, the inscrutable Alice, for the better part of 40 years, not to mention others before and after, all her long life. I do admit, though, when I think of the dusting – I’m willing to try.