What Possessed Me

Another life

I just came upon this photo slideshow from The New York Times and it made me incredibly nostalgic.

What seems like a lifetime ago, I lived in Cairo. It was a teeming, tempting place, well suited for a young woman searching for a place that would rattle her soul.



I lived near an abandoned palace and a third-rate hotel. There was a wedding there every night, it seemed. It wasn’t unusual to be roused from a deep sleep by the beat of the tabla and the sound of women ululating with joy.



At that time in my life, all I could afford to eat was street food. I bought my bread from boys weaving around cars on their bicycles. The bread tasted distinctly of traffic.



I ate fuul and tameyya (stewed broad beans and Egyptian falafel) from my neighborhood cart, spending – at most – a dollar on dinner.



Sometimes, when I wanted a treat, I ate an enormous plate of kosheri, a typically Egyptian delicacy made of lentils, vermicelli, rice, and a spicy tomato sauce. I ate with all the taxi drivers, who greeted me with bemused smiles. Being the only woman in the joint meant that inevitably, someone would buy me a coke (but only if I showed some ankle). One of the saddest things about returning to New York was the scarcity of good kosheri (if you have a source – please tell me and I’ll be your humble servant). When I told my beloved dad that I needed my kosheri fix, he researched recipes and made me a big pot of lovely carboliciousness. Nice man, that daddy o’ mine.



Fridays and Saturdays were my days off. On a beautiful afternoon, I’d buy some execrable Egyptian beer and float down the Nile River on a felucca with friends. Parts of the Nile in Cairo are lined with papyrus and so bucolic and peaceful that it’s easy to imagine what life was like a hundred years ago.



At dusk, we’d careen into traffic, risking our lives in a taxi heading to Islamic Cairo for mint tea and apple-flavored shisha. El Fishawi was one of my favorite places for tea and a smoke, even though it was often overrun with tourists during the day. When my parents came to visit me during Ramadan one year, we were just outside Fishawi as Muslims in the city were beginning to break their fast for the day. An old man pressed a date into my father’s palm and motioned for him to eat it. Another man spooned syrupy sweets into our mouths as we passed by. Such outrageous generosity.



On Saturdays, I’d awake with a raging hangover from the formaldehyde-laced beer and rouse myself from bed just as the day cooled off. In a seething city like Cairo, what ones wants most is solitude and peace. Sometimes I’d find it in the mosque of Ibn Tulun.



All of a sudden, I feel homesick for a place that was home for a brief and heady time. I’m longing to return to see it again.

Where do you long to go?



Photos by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

“Teach us delight in simple things.”

When Friday morning rolled around, I awoke to a gloriously bright and shiny day. It was bliss to have the day off – heaven to make coffee and drink it, eat a grapefruit and listen to the radio with Fauxhawk without rushing around like a maniac. The day stretched out luxuriously before me, full of delicious possibility. I had grand plans – lunch at the Morgan Library, a leisurely walk around MoMa, finding the ultimate work/play bag.

And then I remembered my hair appointment and my little Ashlee Simpson cheat sheet.

All of a sudden, DREAD. Doom.

As far as I’m concerned, haircuts are up there with wisdom tooth extraction in terms of anticipatory dread. I knew a girl who felt this way about therapy - so much so that she bought herself a bag after every session as a reward for surviving the torture. The memory of this very sensible (if expensive) tactic prompted me to pre-reward myself pre-haircut with a little treat (it doesn’t take much to encourage my etsy fixation). When I spotted this little baby, I knew she had to be mine. I knew she would give me strength – that she would buoy me through this difficult time.



Was this bag useful for work? No. Did I need this bag? Spiritually, yes. Did I buy this bag? Yes, I did. My baby’s coming all the way from Bristol and she's gonna be mine-all-mine.

At the salon, I hid behind a shelf of rhubarb hair glosser to avoid an awkward encounter with Chuck, the Butcher of Varick Street. As much as I hated the haircut he gave me, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by cheating on him with New Stylist Person. My intense interest in the range of rhubarb hair products was interrupted by a tattooed assistant, who led me to New Stylist Person’s station.

“So what are we doing?” NSP asked, running her hands through my hair.

“Making it better?” I said. In my nervousness, I had forgotten about my Feist – Stefy – Ashlee hair montage. I just wanted her to fix it – and fix it good.

“What is this?” she asked, picking up a chunk of limp hair from the back of my head.

Hair? Was that the right answer? I wasn’t sure.

“Who cuts your hair?” she asked insistently, wagging the limp hair. “Who did this?”

As a Certified Hair Professional, NSP was obviously outraged by the travesty that unfolded before her. She was determined to get to the bottom of things.

“I don’t know…” I muttered, stalling. I had the distinct feeling something bad was going to happen, but then out it came. “CHUCK!” I blurted.

With the lock still in hand, she called across the room. “What the FUCK, Chuck?” More hair wagging and clucking. I cowered in my seat with eyes lowered. The secret was out – I was cheating on Chuck with another woman, and now that woman was going to kick Chuck’s ass.

“He is sooooo checked out,” said NSP.

There was a lot of snipping. I don’t really recall what happened next as I was busy playing the embarrassing events of the previous few minutes over and over again in my head. All I remember is that NSP said she was from New Jersey, and that it instantly put me at ease. Instinctively, I feel that people from New Jersey care about hair more than other people. In contrast, people from Williamsburg, Brooklyn want to make you like a raving freak while they tell you about their upcoming DJ gig.

After the snipping came the blow-drying. This is typically when the horror unfolds – when you must sit quietly for fifteen minutes while a silent scream wells up inside you. I waited, gripping my chair.

When she was done, NSP twirled me around to get a full view of the coif. It was…a good…haircut. Just the way I like it - shaggy, long, and wavy, with not a hint of crazy.

I looked on in disbelief. “Thank you,” I whispered. I promised her my first unborn child; I offered her gold, frankincense and myrrh. And then I beat it out of there.

What followed was a Prell commercial: nauseating amounts of slow-motion skipping, bouncing, flipping, and tossing of shiny mane as I pranced through SoHo streets. It was a miracle that I was not gunned down for smugness.

My insufferable prancing led me to MarieBelle, the Mecca of chocolate. It was a sign from on high that I should post-reward myself for the haircut. Ignoring the fact that hours before I had already pre-rewarded myself, I wandered in and admired the stacks of gorgeous hot chocolate tins and the gleaming case of beautiful chocolates.



“We have a cacao bar in the back,” said the temptress. Cacoa bar? I’m there. Spicy Aztec Hot Chocolate? Yes, please. I sat in the glamorous cacao bar devouring hot chocolate as thick as pudding and reading my wonderful, fantabulous book. In other words, I was a person with good hair drinking hot chocolate and reading a book on a sunny Friday afternoon.

It was perfection.

And in case you are madly jealous of my new supertastic life, you should know that Verne the Cat has now taken to peeing in the shower and pooping in the kitchen. Apparently, Verne is afraid of the new $200 deluxe self-cleaning litter box Fauxhawk just bought.

In other words, I am person with good hair who scoops and rinses before showering.

Isn’t that fun?

Quote by Rudyard Kipling. Top pic by RedRubyRose. Chocolate porn by MarieBelle.

The post in which I talk about Ashlee Simpson.

I think I lost most of you. But if you're still reading, I thought I'd report that I finally strapped one on and made an appointment to get my hair cut tomorrow. As far as I'm concerned, the only good part of a haircut is the cup of tea and the shampoo – the rest of it makes my knuckles white and my jaw clenched. Hair is emotional, and losing it – even voluntarily - makes me nutsy fagen.

That said, Something Needs to Be Done.

Colleagues and friends have had it to here listening to my hair woes. They’ve all weighed in eight million times on the pros and cons of layers, bangs and hair color. They lived through the Kentucky Massacre this fall, as well as previous unfortunate Pat Benetar/Joan Jett incarnations. Finally, someone suggested I dork out and show the stylist some pictures of hair I like.

Oh.
Good idea.

Stylist person, can you make me look cool yet approachable like Feist?



Or sassy like Stefy?



Or rocked-out like Ashlee? (Internet peeps, I know Ashlee Simpson is a complete toolbag, but I like her hair. And I am not ashamed to admit that I have a secret and unexplainable fascination with Jessica Simpson, who is oddly endearing in her idiocy.)




Can you please not make me look like a coal miner’s wife from the 1970s? Or give me a fullet? Or make my mom cry?

Fanks. ‘Preciate that.