El Andalous - Away and Back

"Hey, dudes, it's time to put your sunglasses back on!"

Hello everyone, I’m back in El Andalous and I’m around half a stone heavier (c. 3kg) than when I left. I’m not worrying as this still puts me considerably lighter than when I first arrived over here and serves to confirm that I did indeed enjoy my time away and that I wasn’t losing weight previously due to a horrible wasting disease of some kind (I had wondered). So, all is good.

I had mixed feelings before going away. I’d got myself into a pleasant routine over here and was a bit reluctant to have it disrupted. Did I really want not to swim in the sea for 18 days? What was so appealing about grey skies and greater expense?

On the other hand, temperatures in Egypt were getting hotter and by the time I went to sleep each night, I started to look forward to a cooler climate where I wouldn’t wake up periodically due to the heat or having to move my sheets from my bedroom to the lounge in the middle of the night just to get some sleep (the air conditioning in my bedroom was broken).

Last time when I returned to Egypt after my UK visit, I’d felt deflated on arriving back, suffering from the impression that Egypt was a place where everything always went wrong; it was the land of constant difficulties.

I was determined that this time it would be very different. I arranged for my flat to be cleaned on the day of my return (it’s very dusty over here and after 18 days my balcony would be like a dusty street) and for various jobs to be done (repair air conditioning, fix drainage problem in bathroom, grout the balcony tiles where it’s come away). Hopefully, this would make me feel good when I got back; it also meant I wouldn’t be sitting around and agonising over whether to give a tip and, if so, how much. They would just give me a bill. A cunning plan, I thought.

Once in Hurghada airport, I felt I’d suddenly been transported back into the hustle and bustle of everyday life after living in a little dream world. The chatter of tourists filled the place, queues were formed everywhere, and I suddenly became aware that it was the holiday season, which had completely passed me by up until now.

Really, in Sahl Hasheesh, I live in a little bubble where time seems not to pass. I struggle to know if it’s winter or summer, a weekday or a weekend, which month it could possibly be. Every day is blue sky and sunshine and I now have my routine. For some this would be dull; for me, it’s how I imagine paradise. Arriving at the airport made me realise that I am still living in the real world and that, somehow, it was already August. How did that happen? I’d last gone to the UK in winter, so my brain was telling me it was probably November. Nothing really matched up.

For some reason, it was only on my return journey that the crowds of people brought home to me just how empty the airports had been when I first arrived in Egypt. I’m not sure I understood this at the time, because I would have thought it was normal, but with the hoards of tourists, I could now see that previously there had been but a trickle of people coming through the airport. In retrospect, it was very sad for Egypt back then with virtually no-one coming in on the planes. At that time, there had been no queues, workers were just hanging about. Now, I was assaulted by loads of tour operators, and this time it was easy to avoid them since there were plenty of tourists flocking in their direction anyway.

I didn’t have to get a visa, so I went straight to the queue for passport control. I always feel a little sceptical that my re-entry visa will work and worry that they will somehow tell me I got the wrong thing and have to pay some enormous fine. Maybe Switzerland gave me that fear.

The passport guy had gone into automatic mode and barely looked at the passports he was stamping, so I also worried that he wouldn’t even look at mine and accidentally stamp it where it shouldn’t be stamped. Obviously, I had nothing better to do while I waited in the queue than to find various things that I could worry about.

Fortunately, he did spot the difference and for a moment he was quite taken aback and started speaking. However, it wasn’t a problem, and it was sufficiently interesting for him to look up at me and see who I was.

Outside, as I searched for Esmat, I spotted a notice saying “Feyona El Andalous Esmat Limos” and from that I knew it was someone that Esmat had sent. I rather liked the Egyptian spelling of my name. I think it quite suits me.

I was welcomed by the security guards as I entered El Andalous and I was shocked to see how clean my flat was when I opened the door. For a moment, I wondered if they’d emptied it, but actually I had tidied a lot away before I left so that they could clean properly. I went into the bedroom, and my air conditioning had been fixed. They’d regrouted not only my balcony but also other places where the tiles were coming unfixed. The only thing not done was the bathroom basin that hadn’t been draining properly, but I decided that they may not have understood what I’d said.

However, this is still Egypt. By the time I wanted to go to bed, the air conditioning had broken again and I had to lug all my sheets back into the lounge (my bedroom was like a furnace). I then noticed that the problem with my wall (it looks like damp, but isn’t) had returned. And I put my washing in my washing machine the next morning and the washing machine broke, so I still have 18 days of clothes to wash. It felt a bit like returning to square one, but maybe I should just see it as Egypt’s way of welcoming me back.