A rainy day in Cairo: mopping up water at the AUC campus

This morning I heard something I had not heard for a very long time; the sound of tapping rain against our bedroom window. I lay in bed nursing Abraham for a long time, listening, remembering our time in Belgium, because that’s what the sound of rain reminds me of. Later in the morning when we went out to buy birthday presents for Courtney, it was still raining, or more like sprinkling, but it was obvious it had been going on for a while, because everything was wet. Most of all though, everything was muddy dirty. The streets were yucky, sidewalks slippery, and buildings looked like they had been first covered in ten layers of dirt and then lightly sprinkled with water (which of course is pretty much what had happened). When I talked to Courtney, who went to teach, on the phone, he told me that it had rained on campus too, and that “they are busy mopping up the water as we speak.” That’s right, he said mopping. The new campus was not built for rain. The huge squares laid with polished marble do not make for safe walking when wet, and the drains, as it turns out, are the highest points, aiding in, rather than preventing, the creation of puddles. So workers were sent out to mop the mile-or-so long center polished marble strip.