To date, so far, I think I've only angered two Egyptians. I'd say that's doing pretty good.
The first of the two I thought was over-charging me and I showed my dis-satisfaction and then he reacted. He knew I was a foreigner.
The second of the two was a shared-cab bus driver (i.e. - microbus, or mashru'a). I got on and then realized I was on the wrong bus and immediately asked him to pull over. He got a little upset and raised his voice and I apologized as he was kind of ranting on. The other passengers recognized my accent straight away as non-Egyptian and they called out to the driver, "Mish MaSri, mish MaSri!!" "He's not Egyptian, he's not Egyptian!!" Two things probably important to know about this are, if I was Egyptian I would have known the bus and not gotten on it in the first place, and you also pay during the ride in the micro-buses (not at the beginning like CapMetro buses). So by assuming that I was Egyptian he was assuming that I was taking advantage of him.
Live and learn, slowly but surely.
Salaam,
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear the people of Alexandria have got your back! By the way, are you still using your same email since you've been abroad? I sent you an email but haven't heard back. I'm guessing that you don't have easy access to the internet, and that's why, but I wanted to check and make sure.