Exodus 9:18

I was quite certain that the rain we saw Thursday morning was going to be all. I was wrong. As the boys & I were leaving for Taekwondo right before 6 pm, it started raining again, this time much heavier. I had Abraham in my sling, so we went over to the midan and flagged down a taxi. As we got in, it started pouring, and when we got to Midan Victoria, it was hailing. The taxi driver held out his hand (all the windows were open and it was hailing into the car), caught some pieces of hail and tasted them, shouting a verse from the Koran over and over again. When we arrived at CSA, the hail had turned into heavy showers again, and everything was flooding. I stayed put for a while, and when the rain slowed down after about ten minutes, I walked over to the Maadi House. I changed Abraham’s clothes and let him play inside a bit, while I picked out a movie, then I signed us up for tennis, and we walked back to CSA, picked up the boys and started home. We had no choice but to walk. All the taxis that passed us were busy. At first I thought it might not be so bad, because it wasn’t raining all that heavily, but then it started pouring again, and we found we had to wade in the dark through puddles on very slippery, muddy roads. The water reached up to our ankles at times. Car engines were dying left and right as cars tried to drive through small lakes, traffic was chaotic, and drivers were not paying attention to pedestrians. I kept using my flashlight to let drivers know we were there. Halfway home, we were all soaked. The sky lit up every other minute and heavy thunder would follow. Abraham was shaking from cold, crying from fear of the thunder, and he was obviously annoyed by the cold rain hitting his head over and over again. We eventually made it home. I made the boys take all their clothes off and hop in the warm bath immediately. After a couple of minutes in the hot water Abraham stopped crying and shaking, enjoying his bath, and I could change into dry clothes. I got Courtney on the phone to make sure he was OK; having seen the traffic, I was worried because I knew he was on his way home from the new campus, and I could only imagine the Autostrade chaos the bus was taking on (as it turns out, a lot of people were unfortunate in this regard). He soon arrived home safely though, and after the rain had slowed down a bit, even Papa John’s made it back out to deliver to us our Thursday night dinner.

When we went out for a walk yesterday, the streets were still flooded and muddy, and today, our Jared’s Bagels delivery guy slipped with his bike and landed in a puddle (together with our onion bagels L), delaying Courtney’s birthday breakfast by an hour. The storm left Cairo feeling and looking like a totally different city!

Because we were out and caught in the middle of it, I don't have any pictures or cool footage of the storm, but you can see some on Nancy & Andrew's blog.