More Retard Medicine

Roommate 3 was sick yesterday. She went to the clinic and was given a new, exciting brand of Retard medicine. C-Retard. Slow release, long lasting:
Hopefully it won't affect her studies!

Last week there was a protest on my street. When the protesters started chanting, it was a bit unnerving to be so close.

I live across the street from Important Government Buildings. I'm not sure what sort of important or what aspect of government, but presumably the protesters knew. Here's what happened:

I came out of my building in a studying-haze in a mission to get a Diet Coke. Mission accomplished (not really difficult considering the three little markets ten feet from my door - I love living in a city!), I headed home only to be interrupted by what seemed like 50 young men, marching in formation down my street.

Big groups of young men marching is not so unusual in Cairo; there is a big military and police presence. The difference was that these men were wearing street clothes, and all the other passers-by on the street were gawking just like me. I asked a man in the door of the business next door to my building (a travel agency, I believe) what was happening, and he told me a word in Arabic I don't remember.

I remembered it long enough then to ask Roommate 3, whereupon she looked it up in the dictionary and discovered what will already be anticlimactic: It means protest.

Soon, the young men were joined by gabs of uniformed and equally young men. Three lines of police officers in all black were lined up in front of my building, right below the balcony of Roommates' 4 and 5's room. We watched them for a while but they did little other than stand and look official, and when the plain clothes dudes started noticing us and making kissy noises we went back inside.

Then, a few hours later, loud chanting began. It was down the street this time, about half a block away, but very loud and basso- the crowd was almost exclusively men. They had banners, and planned chants (all I could understand of it was one that began: "One, Two. . . " - in Arabic, of course), then speeches. They were a bit disorganized, the chants would fizzle out, the crowd was too small to attract media attention.

Just like home. I might have been nostalgic had I not been so confused trying to figure out what they were on about.

I read all the English language newspapers online I could the next day, but the closest I could find was a workers' strike for higher wages, and I don't think the two are related. There are so many things in Egypt they could have been protesting, it's hard to choose. But I don't imagine they were protesting this horrifying issue:

Did you know that 96% of women in Egypt are circumcised? The linked article speaks of a 13 year-old girl who died undergoing the procedure; this spawned more media attention. But, as you can see from the older lady who has been fighting against female circumcision her whole life, it's a very deep seated problem.

And. . . I can't even make coherent thoughts about it. Because. . . just. . .

Yuck.

Yuck in so many aspects of the word.