This time twenty years ago, this writer was the proud owner of a Chinese-made bicycle and he was a bachelor for the second time in his life. Now that he is married, he is now bike-less. Perhaps there is much to be said in favour of the institution of marriage, especially when one's partner is solicitous for your safety and domestic tidiness, usually in the form of the I'm-not-having-that-pushbike-cluttering-up-the-balcony-and-ripping-the-seat-covers admonition. Goodness me, I have digressed already! Where was I? Oh yes, a two-wheeler divorcee. You might say that a bachelor on a bike in Cairo could well find himself in the soup. (Oh dear! That will not work, because “in the soup" is a typically British expression meaning “in difficulty". As for “bachelor", it sounds exactly like the name of a brand of tinned soup and a range of canned vegetables, viz. Batchelor, which, according to intelligence nobly provided by my colleagues, is unavailable in Egypt.) After that long parenthesis, you are probably wondering when this person will ‘get to the meat' of his argument. Never mind the soup for starters. Anyway, I was living in a flat that boasted a toilet cistern cover that was broken in half. Maybe the missing half had been used as an impromptu weapon for use against probably the world's most obnoxious neighbours. The relationship with my fellow tenants was one-sided insofar as I knew nothing about them – not even their names – yet they knew much about me, my movements and my social status. A friend of mine once called on me when I was absent from my residence. The neighbours, he told me later, were helpful. No sooner had he rung the bell, the heavy front door of the adjoining apartment creaked open a little and a voice inquired as to whether my visitor wished to see the khawaga teacher. Having received an answer in the affirmative, they gushed forth with a torrent of detail thus: “Werl, if the khawaga's not in, he might be at his school, which is just a kilometre down the road. He usually leaves at seven in the morning and he's back by five. There again, he might still be up there because the other day, he came back at 7.30 or thereabouts. Is his bike there? You can't see? Did you notice a red bike locked up by the entrance? He sometimes leaves it there in case he's going out soon after he's come back from school. He might have gone to the il-Batta wal-Ibra Supermarket – that's near his school, that it. There again, if his bike's not there, he might have gone to meet that woman. When I say “that woman", werl, she's not his wife or anything like that. No. He hasn't got a ring, you see." Such neighbours could have lived well in the old East Germany, whose Stasi would have welcomed them warmly and showered them with gifts with the occasional holiday in Siberia. To be sure, while the above speculation was born out of superb powers of observation, one wonders whether such individuals are lonely, or whether they have ulterior motives, such as blackmail, or aspirations to becoming Cairo's best-paid informant. And now for a sketch that could be worthy of a television soap opera. Our heroine, Yara, is about to leave her friend, Sousou, after a two-hour visit, during which the subjects of wayward husbands, surly offspring and the price of fish had been covered. “You can't be wanting to go now. It's still only seven o'clock and I've got a nice dinner on. Cow pie. You like my cow pie, don't you, dear?" Sousou pleads. “It sounds very nice, but my girls have been making milk shake and invited most of the university round, so I will probably be up till midnight clearing up their mess," Yara laments. “Let them clear it up. You stay and have a couple of platefuls of cow pie." “Like I said, I'd like to but, well, you know, transport...the security on that stretch of road." “I know, dear, but a few spoonfuls of raspberry jelly and custard will go down a treat after a couple of helpings of cow pie. I mean, you can't spend two hours on that bus on an empty stomach, can you?" Yara slips on her coat with an air of finality and out of the front door. Her mobile chirrups. She waves a perfunctory goodbye to Sousou, who is standing at her front door. Her eyes narrow in a classic end-of-scene soap opera attitude. Meanwhile, Yara finds that she had 40 minutes before he bus leaves, so she steps into Mall Number 7 to buy sundry items for her recent mobile caller. She later boards her bus with two carrier bags bearing the logo of il-Batta wal-Ibra Supermarkets. Cut to fresh-faced young woman who, unseen, observes Yara, watching her every move. She takes out her mobile and hurriedly dials. Fade out. The following day, Sousou is speaking on her mobile. She is not looking very pleased. “You said you were going home and I heard that you went into Mall Number 7 and did some shopping!" she bellows into her device. “And you declined my offer of cow pie followed by raspberry jelly and custard so that you go gallivanting about and leave me on my own!...Who told me you were in Mall Number 7? I'll tell you! It was a distant cousin, who telephoned me not ten minutes ago!...What business is it of my distant cousin? Well, hear this: her ex-husband fancies you...So what? You say. Well, I'll tell you so what: He has an office in Mall Number 7, that's what...Of course, it's my business! She's my distant cousin and she." “What do you mean? Mall Number 7's due for demolition!" Cut to Yara saying in a sarcastic tone: “No Mall Number 7, no more problems about being spotted by your distant relatives spying on me!" Great soap opera material that explore the theme of informing on friends to control, condemn or to justify sometimes violent future action.
