Eenglish

It was the Bicentennial in Cairo and our plan was to go to the Embassy and eat American food. My friend Ken, with whom I was staying, had heard that the Paris and London embassies were putting on giant spreads, so on the Glorious Fourth we went to our embassy in Cairo looking for hot dogs, fried chicken and Budweiser.  But the guards at the gate had turned us away, firmly but almost politely.  Egyptian capitalists and government officials only, than you very much.  Get your lowly proletarian butt out of here.

So we had taken our lowly proletarian butts to Ken’s favorite American restaurant in Cairo --- a Wimpy’s.

When someone takes me to his or her favorite restaurant, I expect that the food will be good, or at least edible.  But the Wimpyburger was a pathetic lukewarm paste made up of breadcrumbs and some material that might have once been part of an animal, but chances are the animal had not been a steer.  The parfait that came with it seemed to be made out of dyed cotton wool and even the Coke tasted like the laxative my mother used to give me as a child.  What on earth was special about this place?

I asked Ken, but he was unresponsive and just kept starting up at the ceiling.  Or so I thought.  He was actually staring out of the windows that were mounted just below the ceiling, since the restaurant was in a basement.  At a certain angle, one could look up the skirts of the women passing by on the sidewalk.  Ah.  I understood.  I saw that the restaurant was full of guys just like him paying premium prices for shit sandwiches so they could watch the floor (or ceiling) show.