If Only I Had a Blowtorch

I had a lovely dinner last night with Number 2 and The Roommate, after which we visited two bars we could find (we never did figure out where that third one is hiding). Whilst Number 2 went along her merry way home, The Roommate and I returned to our building at about 12.30.

Some background: for reasons unclear to me, the doormen (called bawab in Arabic; we have two) in our building bolt the outside doors so that, when residents arrive after a certain time, they are locked out and have to ring the bell to be let in. Every other time this has happened (read: every weekend), one bawab or the other has roused himself promptly to open the door. Every other time, a bawab has either been sleeping on the entry-way floor or has been seated nearby.

Every other time.

Last night, no one came. No one came for about five minutes, during which time a very chatty Egyptian gentleman with a strange contraption (a knotted scarf, perhaps) on his head and only a few teeth told us various things in Arabic that we couldn't understand. Then a man I recognized arrived to try and rescue us from our plight.

He is somewhat of a backup bawab who has opened the door for me in the past. This time, he explained that the one bawab had gone off somewhere and the other. . . We're still not sure. Backup Bawab produced a little book of phone numbers and, using my and The Roommate's phone, called one of the doormen and then the other in succession. The result? No one came to open the door and our toothless, scarf-wearing friend chatted excitedly but with no more clarity. The gist seemed to be that the bawab was probably sleeping upstairs and why didn't come back later?

It was 1 am when the Backup Bawab called a third number and insisted that we would be let in within half an hour. By then, I had texted a friend who lives not-so-close-by to ask whether we could sleep on her couches (she was very kind to say yes) when we saw our savior pull up on a moped.

At 1.10 am, some brilliant and life-saving individual in our building had ordered a McDelivery from McDonalds (24 hour service) and, since the door was also bolted to the deliver man, the orderer had to come down to retrieve his Big Mac. I'm not sure what might have happened had the gods of American consumerism not rescued us from the chilly night air, and I'm glad not to know.

Below is the offending bolt. I am trying to figure a way to sabotage it so that we will never again have the same experience (we can't bet on hungry building-mates every morning), but it looks pretty firmly attached to the door.

Unfortunately, I left my blowtorch behind in America.