Egyptian Men and Mummies

Of all the men in all the tourist destinations in all the Arabic countries in the world who stand outside on the street asking/begging women to eat at their minging restaurant/buy their badly made tourist tat/trust them with their lives and let them drive them home/marry them, I wonder if any of them, ever, have had an answer in the positive. I simply have no idea why they bother. "All my life, all I have been looking for, eet iz you, madam, you are so byoootiful, please, please do me the honour...?" Has that ever worked? Do they know someone who knows someone who once walked the dog of someone who asked a blonde in the street to come home with them, and she said yes? It is simply staggering.

But then, when in some ways so much is different, then suddenly everything is the same. Yesterday I was lying by the pool surrounded by three mothers, one English, one Estonian, one German, all of whom had babies under three months, all of whom lived in Dahab with their husbands/boyfriends, and all they did, all day, from approx. 10am til about 4pm, was talk about their offspring. It was breathtakingly boring. Then again, all I did during the same time was try to get a tan. I doubt I was particularly interesting. But in my head, I was scintillating. They, on the other hand, made ditch-water look like a sparkling dinner party companion.

All is well here, though. I have never been whiter, of course, but that is inevitable for any hot holiday I go on. I have made friends, yoga is brilliant and I managed the crow pose for all of a second yesterday before falling forward into a somersault. Last night we went to a restaurant for dinner and had Egyptian cabernet sauvignon which stripped approximately three layers of skin from my throat and larynx. Miraculously, it became more delicious after a few glasses. Today I have been playing Would You Rather...? by the pool with Lucy and Clare. Tomorrow I am going snorkeling. I am eating a lot of fig rolls. The binding of the Paul Auster book gave up and so I had to abandon ship and start Margaret Atwood. There's more to tell but this keyboard is unbelievably sticky and I am getting aching wrists.