we ate at Mom

Our cameras are still locked in customs, a situation whose direness seems to be increasing exponentially. The movie is losing money quickly. It's hard to feel bad yet, though, since the result for me has been vacation.

We did spend four hours yesterday trying out various combinations of costume and makeup, and parading for the director, who is VERY opinionated about these things. He has a very demanding and singular vision for how the movie should look, and I respect it. At the end of it, he assigned me to sit by the pool and get some sun. I've had some easy jobs in my days, I'll admit, but that one clearly took the cake. Maybe I should be a lifeguard!!!

Last night we ventured out of the massive gates of the hotel and wandered through this area known as Sixth of October. It's a really bizarre aesthetic here- a complex that has been built in the middle of nowhere in the desert... (I guess most of Cairo is like that!) ...it's clearly trying to be a luxury area- there's a Gold's Gym, and several fancy hotels, one street of mansions (that I hear are homes to rich Iraqis fleeing the war), a condominium complex, and a couple of corporate campuses. But still, everywhere, are trashed-out abandoned lots with old construction materials in them, and the brickwork sidewalks are in dotted lines, petering out into curb-contained sandboxes and piles of unused bricks. It all has the feel that a grand design was hatched, and then halted about a quarter into production. The places that are finished are finished well- our hotel with its mushroom-covered lawns, and the Hyper One mall with its shopping cart that towers into the sky, but the rest seems to be ground down by the sand, steadily sliding into entropy.

We ate at a restaurant called Mom. It only is a restaurant because there are menus and food eventually comes; other than that it really is just a sand field covered with lawn furniture and Indian rugs and pillows. The food was fantastic, and I treated all six of us. We feasted, ordering EVERY appetizer, and each person had an entree (Jeff had two), and I dropped a whopping $50 to cover all of us. It did take two hours for the food to come out, so it was lucky that we still have a lot of getting-to-know-you to do, and the night was rather cool. Apple-scented shisha smoke wafted from around us, and a family of kittens circled us, mewing, but never getting close. The beauty of it all was a little busted when they dragged out a projection TV and blasted some channel with a never-ending story in Arabic, apparently centering on what a great party-town Beirut is.

On the walk back, we passed an enormous mosque, decorated in Xmas lights, in the middle of worship. Hundreds of people were praying, and a singing male voice was blasting at arena concert volume.

This morning, I wait to see if there are developments on the cameras, but they made it pretty clear that there are some Russian actors here that need to leave soon, they will probably shoot them first. We are tentatively planning on taking advantage of another free day and going to the Pyramids.

There are more pictures up at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7563&l=6e713&id=514867448.

Love you all.