(That is as close as I can come to the phonetic spelling. The “!” is a glottal stop.)
If you ever move to Egypt, bring passport style photos with you.
Lots of them.
We had 6 taken, each. Those were gone by the 2nd day.
We went to a photo shop to have more taken and the minimum number that they would sell you was 24 photos.
We thought that was an insane amount of pictures. “Why would you need that many”. After being here a week (wow, 7 days…) we realize “ya know, 24 photos probably would have been a good idea”
Anyway, we were at the bank opening an account for Kaddee’s salary deposit and getting ATM cards. They require a passport photo. We had a block of six. They were in a square and needed to be cut apart. We asked for a scissors.
“fii ma!assh?” (“Is there scissors?”)
“Mafiish ma!assh” was the response. “There are no scissors”.
I wasn’t sure I was understood or that I understood the response.
“Mafiish ma!assh?”
“Mafiish ma!assh”.
There are no scissors.
I showed the nice lady the photos and she said “ah, ok give to me”
I figured, “ok, they don’t give out the scissors she will cut one out of the block for me”
No. She took the block of photos and very slooowly and carefully tore one photo from the block and then did the same with Kaddee’s photo.
I should have offered to go around the corner to the guy selling the handguns. I think I saw a pair of scissors in the pile..