Cairo Dairy (#2): Water

Adam Thomas, who lived in Egypt for a year, presents another right honourable extract from his diary




In Cairo you never feel clean. This is mostly because you never are; the air is heavy with dust and exhaust fumes that burn the back of your throat and coat your skin. It gets in your hair and pores and when you sweat it out you even your sweat tastes worse than normal. There is also a variety of smells to be had. Our street often smelled of vomit. Sometimes it smelled like barbeque; sometimes of both. Sometimes garlic. We found out later that this was because the top floor of our building was full of boxes stacked filled with garlic, slowly going bad. But we didn’t worry, we just took what we needed and left. Also the water is full of chlorine. This is because they use it to kill all the stuff that you get in the Nile - because it is bear dirty. Trouble is, now the water is full of chlorine, we couldn’t drink it; on account of our precious white skin, which turns green if chlorine gets in it. Also it turns you into a lifeguard, and then you can’t go about you business any more because people are always shouting “Oi lifeguard, come over here and look at my shoes, you stupid bastard” and stupid stuff like that.

Words: Adam Thomas