I hate airplanes. Sure, they are wonderful for getting you places fairly quickly, but I do not sleep well, if at all, on them. Thus, the flight to Egypt was 18 hours of getting up, climbing over my neighbors (I was in the middle seat), walking around, popping aspirin, trying to keep my ankles from swelling up (futile), and my DVT from flaring up. So when I got off the plane, I was a wrinkled, sweaty (from the immediate Egyptian heat), messy-haired ball of exhaustion with elephant ankles.
As we waited for the members of our tour to gather in the lobby of the Cairo airport, I was enjoying the novel sights of men in white, blue, or gray galabeyas and women covered head to toe in black, carrying Gucci purses and chasing around toddlers dressed in sundresses and shorts. Then, while looking around our group, my eyes met those of an Egyptian guy about my age. He wasn't too shabby looking: shaved head, beautiful brown Egyptian skin, large dark eyes, nice shoulders (I'm a shoulders girl), and about my height. Now, we've all been there before, you meet the eyes of a stranger and you have two options, you keep looking or you look away quickly, hoping he didn't see you. Well, I made it a goal a few years ago to stop being the silly girl who looks away. So I did what any mature, reasonable person would do, I smiled.
The guy got this really strange look on his face. Surprise? Astonishment? Disgust? Fear? I have no idea, but then, in the blink of an eye it was gone and he smiled back just before I looked away.
I turned to Annie and whispered, "I'll have to tell you later about the moment I just had."
"What kind of moment? Was it 'a moment in the woods?'" (Anyone outside of my family who gets that movie reference gets brownie points with me.)
I answered "Yes, but with eyes."
This is where she informs me that it is considered EXTREMELY flirtatious behaviour in Egypt to meet a guy eye to eye. Heck! I didn't know!! While Annie was reading up on Egyptian culture on her iPod Touch on the flight, I was doing laps around the coach area.
So I started trying to avoid making eye contact with males. It's so hard! And it makes me feel weird, like a slave in the presence of her master. Yuk.
Anyway, we load onto the bus and guess who else gets on. Yep. Eye-contact-surprised-smile man is on our bus. He's "taking care of us" while we're in Cairo. His name, by the way, is Mohammad. Of course.
Well, despite my best efforts to the contrary, Mohammad managed to catch my eyes again and smiled. When Annie told Mom what was going on, she leaned over and said "No Egyptian son-in-laws (Carlie thought she said "No Egyptian lip gloss" ha ha!) because then my grand babies would live too far away." Then she paused and thought for a moment before changing her mind: "Oh, but this could be a good thing because we could come over once a year to visit!"
Thankfully, at this point, everyone became too busy looking at Cairo to say anything more.
As we got off the bus, I kept my eyes modestly averted as I passed Mohammad...until he stomp-stepped in front of me, which scared me half to death and surprised me into looking at him. He smiled at me, so I smiled back and walked away, bringing this story to a romantic, graceful end.
Right?
Wrong.
I only took two steps before the pocket of my capris somehow caught on a random part of a parked car and I had to stop to de-tangle them! Graceful, indeed.
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