Monitoring the Situation

The WiFi was uncharacteristically laggy in my fully equipped and serviced Garden City flat yesterday evening. My illegally-streamed movie night was interrupted over and over. I had to twiddle my thumbs while I waited for Frances Ha to catch up from freezing and buffering every few minutes.

When I woke up, I was dismayed to find that the water pressure in my hot shower was slightly lower than I’m used to, and balked at how it sort of sputtered every minute or so before flowing back to a steady stream again.

By the time I got dressed and made it downstairs to Vasko, ordered my fancy espresso drink, my cherry danish, and finally sat down at my computer, the power cut in the whole cafe.

I don’t think any of these incidents were related, but it got me thinking.

As the milk steaming wands on their brand new La Marzocco quietly hissed off and the dings from the Talabat (think Egyptian Uber Eats) iPad terminal stopped dinging, everyone went about their mornings like it was nothing.

The first time I experienced a power outage in Egypt, I was at a restaurant with a couple of friends I’d made earlier that night. About halfway through courses of mombar and stuffed pigeon being carted out to our table, the whole building went totally dark.

Without missing a beat, my friend pulled out her phone. She put it screen-down on the table, and put a bottle of water over the flashlight, using the water and plastic to sort of diffuse the light around like a makeshift lantern. I looked around at everyone doing this and laughed at the split-second ingenuity as we continued our meal like nothing happened.

I was curious though — what caused it? Was it common? Is this just how life is out here? I was still new in Cairo and I wasn’t sure if I should get used to this.

Last month, Egypt footed a $560,000,000 gas import bill. This month, they’re looking at paying $1.65 billion. In lieu of jacking up prices or putting everyone through rolling blackouts, for at least a month, Cairo will be forced to dim itself.

Starting March 28th, by executive decree, Egypt will institute a nationwide energy curfew. That means cafes, restaurants, and malls will all be forced to close at 9pm — at 10pm on weekends. I’m naturally furious because 10pm is precisely when Cairo gets good. Friends and entire families all come out, shopping downtown and eating in the streets until 2 or 3am. What’s Cairo without its nightlife?

In addition to forced closures of the sorts of places that people like myself enjoy frequenting in the evening hours, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs and hit refresh on my streaming sites (or, idk, be productive? sleep at a reasonable hour?) the government will be switching off billboard lighting, reducing street lighting, and closing their offices in the New Administrative Capital by 6pm. There’s also a freeze or postponement on national projects that consume large amounts of diesel — all this is being presented as an energy-smart, foreign-currency-saving move.

All my Cairene friends I’ve asked about this give me very glib, nonchalant answers to my prying questions. It’s life! Don’t worry about it! What they’re all trying to tell me, I think, is to get it through my head, dude — this isn’t America. Live and learn. It’s not going to be perfect all the time. Drive east a few short hours and find yourself in a war zone, buddy. Let’s not forget where we are.

My first instinct in this situation is to pack my bags. The lights went out for all of forty-five seconds, if that, and within ninety I had Kiwi.com open in one tab and Airbnb in another, running a comprehensive sweep of every sunny, artsy city I could think of within a three-hour flight radius. Dahab. Tunis. Antalya. I was mentally packing my beach bag before the espresso machine could steam itself back to life.

I can’t live like this, I moan to myself between sips of sweet lemon and mint juice from a curly straw.

I think I’ve always done this. The moment a place gets uncomfortable or unpredictable, my thumb and middle finger spring into action as I mentally hit command+T. Not necessarily because I’ve made any hard-lined decisions to go, but because knowing I can go is the thing that brings me comfort and lets me stay. The possibility of exit is a coping mechanism that I’ve tested and relied on time after time. This is my Emotional Support Expedia.

My friends here don’t have that same tab open. When they shrug and say “it’s life,” maybe they aren’t being glib as much as they’re just speaking from a place I haven’t actually arrived at yet — the place past negotiation, past scanning for alternatives, where you’ve already absorbed the terms of being here and moved on with your day.

As I flip through tabs — in my head and on my iPad, I keep circling around this thought:

If I say I love Cairo — and I really do — what am I actually saying? Because “I love Cairo” with a crisp blue passport and regular (okay, semi-regular) USD-denominated direct deposits into my globally available checking account sounds a hell of a lot different than “I love Cairo” when you just got a 36-month conscription notice in the mail and an electric bill that just tripled.

When I say that I love Cairo, I have to say that I love it with an asterisk.

But I’m here.

After I’ve come to cruising altitude, real life still goes on on the ground. The energy curfew will still hit at 9pm. The cafés will still lock up and the water will still sputter. My friends will keep on making lanterns out of water bottles and telling stories and laughing through it all whether I’m here or not. No one is putting their lives on pause here. Meanwhile, I might be on a beach drinking Coca Cola from the can or en route to my next country, telling someone how much I love Egypt as we sit down for 11pm dinner.

Egypt is rationing energy because the supply can’t meet the demand. Dimming the billboards and streetlights, pulling back on consumption — conservation by decree. What I’m inclined to do here feels weirdly similar. I feel like I’m hedging my bets— rationing my presence and dimming my tolerance for discomfort the moment it flickers. I’m negotiating on my eagerness to really be here the second I see a news article saying my terms and conditions might change.

Leaving at the first sign of inconvenience would be, in the best words I can think of, a bitch move.

I know that. But I also know that staying doesn’t automatically make me brave or wise or more committed to this place — or to any place. Staying just means I’m still here.

So, I’m closing my tabs for now. I still have work to do. I still have people to meet and I still want to take Arabic classes. I’ll order a second lemon juice.

The power is back on and the iPad is dinging again with delivery orders and out on the street, Cairo is going to keep on doing what Cairo does best whether I’m here or not. It’s 10pm somewhere, and the water bottles are coming out.