I'm back home in Cairo and trying to balance the several projects that still need drawings done and making the flat more pleasant to live in. The very crudely patched hole in the bathroom ceiling doesn't help much. Nor do the several drawings that need to be finished before mid December.
The hole happened while Antje and Micha, two friends from Hannover, were staying here for a week while I was down in Luxor (that's an entirely different story and a bit of a boring one). After innocently inquiring per text how things were, I was surprised to hear my bathroom being described as a construction site. Immediately on arrival I asked the Bawaba (Bab= door or gate, the Bawab is someone who sits in front of the door and does upkeep, small errands (or even larger errands), asks strangers where the hell they think they're going and in absence pays the weekly gas and electric bills) what had happened. A big bespectacled grin and a thumbs up sign, assured me that all was right.
My bathroom has never been the best the place in the house, even before my taking over the flat, but now it's pathetic. In a corner there's a 30 cm diameter splash of concrete smeared on the ceiling. Then there's the spray of concrete drops over the rest of the bathroom and the grimy hand-prints on the ceiling, which is slowly (though lately not so slowly) shedding its layers of paint; sickly yellowish paint. Renovation is desperately needed and I'm willing to, waiting to, wanting to but there's just too much work that I have to finish.
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