Grills and Female Circumcision
A very strange day. I went to the library to work, and in the evening Mark called and asked if I could help him move his aunt's grill up to his house. This was a grill worthy of Texas, in fact it probably came from Texas. It was huge. Trying to disassemble the thing and get it downstairs was an adventure in and of itself. In addition, his aunt had left us a LOT of American super-market food, which had me all kinds of giddy.

The cab ride back was also odd. The driver was a really nice guy, but for some reason or another we started talking about sex, and he brought up the issue of female circumcision (something that around 80% of women here have). It was interesting and actually very unsettling to see how he argued for it. It was a medical thing, he claimed -- we do this to help our daughters, because otherwise they suffer from sexual "fever" (سخونة) and can neither control themselves nor be satisfied -- all this can be avoided with a quick operation that reminds me, rather queasily, of the way same way male circumcision or ambiguous gender "correction" is handled in the US, as a necessary and beneficial medical practice. He then went on to say, all the women in my family are circumcised, my mother, my sisters, and if I were to ever have a daughter, I'd circumcise her too. (internal cries of "noo!") I said, I really think it's horribly painful and can lead to complications and death. No, we all do it, was the reply. Before you make that decision, at least talk to a doctor, I ventured. He nodded and waved us goodbye. Mark's bag went off with him.

What does one do when someone is so sure about themselves?

We got home and started putting things in the fridge. As the groceries piled up, I thought to myself I should take a picture and show it off online, so I look... and I can't find my camera anywhere. Not a place. The last time I had it was in Alex, but I didn't even take it out of the bag, not once. Very, very worried and upset. Mark went back to Ma3adi to get more stuff, and I started drinking beer. Mark got back and he was so stoked about the grill and revved up from the trip he started making us drinks. An hour or two later, we were pretty gone.

Today was a day of great gains and great losses. Gained: a refrigerator of food: milk, tortillas, barbecue sauce, syrup, tons of meat, bacon, frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets, pudding, girl scout cookies, cereal, lentils, rice, wheat bread, mac-n-cheese, jello, instant soup, marshmallows, gatorade, gin, vermouth, wine, nice german beer, triple sec. Grill.

Lost: Mark's bag, my camera (hopefully not permanently), Mark's cell phone.