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Feb. 10th, 2008 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe Little Store actually had a good Saturday. Not a great Saturday. But a good Saturday. Except I was so tired afterwards I passed on Susie B's fabulous Valentines Day party and collapsed at home.
In the middle of the afternoon a guy came into the store and stopped next to the politically incorrect teeshirt display, leaning hard on the front counter.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I hurt."
"Is it your back?"
"It's everything," he said. He was a middle-aged guy with a pleasant florid face, and a bit of a gut.
"What can I do to help you?" I asked. I was concerned. Calling an ambulance was going to be bad for business.
"I just got back from overseas," he said. "I'm too old for that stuff."
"Are you in the military?"
"Private contractor," he said. He named a couple of Iraqi cities and shook his head. "It's hard."
"It is hard," I said. "Of course, the money's good. So it's a trade-off."
He shook his head. His eyes were haunted. Maybe he'd been drinking though I didn't smell alcohol. "I don't know what to do."
"Listen," I said. "You're going to be okay –"
"I'm too old," he said. "Too old. You think you can do it, and then you can't. And the divorce."
"Hey, you're an attractive man," I said. "And you can get married again if you want to." I smiled and held up the hand with my wedding ring. "See? I'm an entirely disinterested, objective observer. Maybe you are too old for contract work but there are a thousand other things you can do, right? It's going to be okay."
Of course after that what could he do but buy $60 worth of stuff? I'll tell you, I'm a ho…
In the evening one of my favorite customers of all time came into the store with his family. A Russian guy who's been coming in to the store three times a year since we opened. He always buys Da Bomb in all three strengths – Ground Zero, Beyond Insanity and Final Answer. Sometimes other things too.
"My customers," he says, chuckling and shaking his head. "Like water they go through this. Is test."
I laughed but forebore to ask him about his line of work.
"How long you here now?"
"Four and a half years," I said.
"Four and a half years! I am very happy that you make it."
I would have laughed in his face, but I like him too much.
Sitting in a Cairo teahouse, one of the few we've been able to track down that caters Western-style to both men and women. As such it features formica-topped tables and those cone-shaped lighting fixtures that are so popular in Howard Johnson's throughout Ohio. Also prices to match. Which makes it something of a high-class joint in Cairo circles.
This city depresses me. It is too squalid to be exotic – the poverty unbelievable and somehow also accepted; there is nothing of the smoldering resentment you find in the most run-down of American urban slums – Harlem, Washington D.C., Watts – which may be comparable in terms of living conditions. But which also may not be – because truly there is no way out for any of these people, not the illusion of education, not movie stardom, not revolution, not any of the rope ladders that are waved down into the pit of American despair, and used by propagandists to perpetuate the myth of upward mobility. People are shoved on top of people as more are born and fewer die and the tenements grow more crowded and the streets more congested. Day and night, the streets are teeming with people.
The city if it were completely evacuated would remind me of downtown Oakland or parts of Genoa – there is no distinctly middle-Eastern style of architecture. Instead there are four-story office buildings (kind of thrown up in three hours by crooked contractors out of cinder blocks and Elmer's Glue-All) with little shops staking out squatters rights on the ground floor; there is endless dust and car exhaust and people moving at gaits that don't seem quite right – their hips thrust out at strange angles, their necks out of joint. Neon airline signs battle for the skyline.
The city is either being built up or torn down – it's impossible to say which because I never seen anybody actually working. But my Western-trained mind refuses to accept the evidence that these stretches of dirt and potholes that occur every twenty feet or so are ends in themselves. It's one of a number of little things that don't quite fit into a pattern I can make sense of. Which doesn't mean the pattern isn't there. Except –
Consider the dress code. A scattering of men in suits clutching brief cases, Beirut business community types. A much larger proportion of young Arabs in cheap sports clothes, maroon sweaters with rips under the armpits and purple slacks. Some of them wear scarves wrapped around their heads Arab-style, all of them seem to move awkwardly as though they're uncomfortable with this style of dress – it chafes in unfamiliar places and the cheap synthetic materials make them sweat too much. Older men or men who obviously don't live in Cairo wear cotton burnooses in various dirt-resistant colors – I'm assuming the choice of fabric reflects the tastes of the owner of the bargain basement where they were bought rather than any complicated clanship. But I could be assuming wrongly – I do so often.
In the middle of the afternoon a guy came into the store and stopped next to the politically incorrect teeshirt display, leaning hard on the front counter.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I hurt."
"Is it your back?"
"It's everything," he said. He was a middle-aged guy with a pleasant florid face, and a bit of a gut.
"What can I do to help you?" I asked. I was concerned. Calling an ambulance was going to be bad for business.
"I just got back from overseas," he said. "I'm too old for that stuff."
"Are you in the military?"
"Private contractor," he said. He named a couple of Iraqi cities and shook his head. "It's hard."
"It is hard," I said. "Of course, the money's good. So it's a trade-off."
He shook his head. His eyes were haunted. Maybe he'd been drinking though I didn't smell alcohol. "I don't know what to do."
"Listen," I said. "You're going to be okay –"
"I'm too old," he said. "Too old. You think you can do it, and then you can't. And the divorce."
"Hey, you're an attractive man," I said. "And you can get married again if you want to." I smiled and held up the hand with my wedding ring. "See? I'm an entirely disinterested, objective observer. Maybe you are too old for contract work but there are a thousand other things you can do, right? It's going to be okay."
Of course after that what could he do but buy $60 worth of stuff? I'll tell you, I'm a ho…
In the evening one of my favorite customers of all time came into the store with his family. A Russian guy who's been coming in to the store three times a year since we opened. He always buys Da Bomb in all three strengths – Ground Zero, Beyond Insanity and Final Answer. Sometimes other things too.
"My customers," he says, chuckling and shaking his head. "Like water they go through this. Is test."
I laughed but forebore to ask him about his line of work.
"How long you here now?"
"Four and a half years," I said.
"Four and a half years! I am very happy that you make it."
I would have laughed in his face, but I like him too much.
Sitting in a Cairo teahouse, one of the few we've been able to track down that caters Western-style to both men and women. As such it features formica-topped tables and those cone-shaped lighting fixtures that are so popular in Howard Johnson's throughout Ohio. Also prices to match. Which makes it something of a high-class joint in Cairo circles.
This city depresses me. It is too squalid to be exotic – the poverty unbelievable and somehow also accepted; there is nothing of the smoldering resentment you find in the most run-down of American urban slums – Harlem, Washington D.C., Watts – which may be comparable in terms of living conditions. But which also may not be – because truly there is no way out for any of these people, not the illusion of education, not movie stardom, not revolution, not any of the rope ladders that are waved down into the pit of American despair, and used by propagandists to perpetuate the myth of upward mobility. People are shoved on top of people as more are born and fewer die and the tenements grow more crowded and the streets more congested. Day and night, the streets are teeming with people.The city if it were completely evacuated would remind me of downtown Oakland or parts of Genoa – there is no distinctly middle-Eastern style of architecture. Instead there are four-story office buildings (kind of thrown up in three hours by crooked contractors out of cinder blocks and Elmer's Glue-All) with little shops staking out squatters rights on the ground floor; there is endless dust and car exhaust and people moving at gaits that don't seem quite right – their hips thrust out at strange angles, their necks out of joint. Neon airline signs battle for the skyline.
The city is either being built up or torn down – it's impossible to say which because I never seen anybody actually working. But my Western-trained mind refuses to accept the evidence that these stretches of dirt and potholes that occur every twenty feet or so are ends in themselves. It's one of a number of little things that don't quite fit into a pattern I can make sense of. Which doesn't mean the pattern isn't there. Except –
Consider the dress code. A scattering of men in suits clutching brief cases, Beirut business community types. A much larger proportion of young Arabs in cheap sports clothes, maroon sweaters with rips under the armpits and purple slacks. Some of them wear scarves wrapped around their heads Arab-style, all of them seem to move awkwardly as though they're uncomfortable with this style of dress – it chafes in unfamiliar places and the cheap synthetic materials make them sweat too much. Older men or men who obviously don't live in Cairo wear cotton burnooses in various dirt-resistant colors – I'm assuming the choice of fabric reflects the tastes of the owner of the bargain basement where they were bought rather than any complicated clanship. But I could be assuming wrongly – I do so often.
