"Mr. Cem!"

I look across the bedroom at Akbar. Hes sitting to the left of the computer that Mohammed #1 and Mohammed #4 are fighting over. They are installing Windows XP professional onto a Pentium 2 PC. This software, when legally purchased, costs more than they make in a year, especially in the slum town of Helwan we are sitting in, in which the roads are uneven dirt and garbage is simply thrown into unkempt piles and picked over by legions of cats. There is a donkey outside. They didn't purchase the software.

"Mr. Cem!"

Akbar again. He was a nice guy, if a little dim cmopared to the rest. He crosses his wrists in front of himself, palms inward, as if to display handcuffs.

M4:"Akbar want to say yesterday he arrested for fighting on the train."

Akbar smiles at me, shaking a huge, stubby Felaheen fist at me. I note that his forehead is one inch.

M1: "Mr. Cem! Do like Terminator 3?" M1 is starting Windows Media Player to show me the movie. I imagine the American developers who wrote the code for WMP, and if they ever imagined this kind of user. It occurs to me that maybe copy-proof software is a good thing, and that from Shanghai to Tunis people are freeloading on American/Japanese ingenuity. I flinch, beacuse I have always been anti-copyright, but I cannot deny the feeling.

Staring at the guys fighting over whos going to control WMP, I realize that seeing illegal copies of all kinds of software and entertainment in Thailand never bothered me. What was bothering me was that these people are the same ones who were just talking shit about my country, and now they are high fiving to one of America's worst sequels ever on pirated American software.

M4: "Mr. Cem! You like Egyptian music?" Suddenly M4 switches T3 to some kind of horrible Egyptian pop. All 4 guys jump up and start dancing at once, in a way that I find horribly goofy, feminine, and alien all at once. Akbar gets a large knife from the next room, and they start incorporating the knife into the dance, passing it from person to person weaving it through the air, throwing it from hand to hand. I was dumbfounded.

Figo:"Senore Cem, musica Egyptiano bieno, no?" (sp?)

Figo's real name is Gamel, but he doesn't know English, so he speaks to me in Italian, of which I understand 30 percent. None-the-less I was met with unbelieveable hospitality several hours prior when his whole family took me in for dinner. Figo's mother, who has breast cancer and cannot afford a doctor, prepared an unusually good meal for me on the spot, even making the pita bread fresh and by hand. We sat around the TV in their ancient two story house watching re-runs of October 6th celebrations which reminded me of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Salt-Lake City.

Amid all the dancing, M1's mother enters the room with 6 glasses of fresh mango juice.

"Shookrun." (Thanks) I say "Enti latifa gidan" (you are so very nice)
"Afwan" She says, and walks back to the female area of the house.

Suddenly M1 looks at me, and seemingly out of nowhere asks:

"Mr. Cem - do like Bush, or Saddam?"

Politics are far more important to everyday life and conversation here in the ME than in the US, and often when people know I am American, it seems that the statements are on the tip of their tongue

M1's father suddenly enters the room - a small, wide man in a long white robe, his forehead bruised form constant supplication. In English he blurts out:

"Saddam good man. His people love him. He make them happy."

Knowing better than to argue with the man of the (muslim and arab) house in a religious quarter of a very distant slum in the biggest Arab city the world, yet not wanting to bend over for this and aware that any attempt at explaining would be unproductive, I looked at Figo quickly and said-

"Coza-coza" (Italian for so-so)

I smiled and looked at my mango juice.

Mohammed #1's mother, covered completely in black except for her eyes and thick hands peered through the door.

She blinked.
I blinked.
And for a few moments, we were all silent.