first posting

The editors apologize to general readership that we have been negligent recently (ok, always) in posting to this up-and-coming publication: The Daily Rod. Expect in the future that these pages will be chock full of intelligent and prolific insight into the complexity of Cairo society – or at the very least will provide you with a mundane record of ordinary events (today editors woke up exhausted, went to work, slept at work, went home, slept at home, ingested frightful shewarma and grainy coffee, and returned to the Daily grind of providing our dear readers with tantalizing prose, dropping from the page like beautiful bombs (stolen)).

As your editors are in the exclusive employ of a foreign government (slightly silly), and cognizant of the dangers of posting such blistering text on the internet (very silly), we have reserved our right to remain strictly anonymous and urge our readership not to delve even shallowly into our true identities, lest we unleash the hound of hell that is our diabolical intelligence agency (not silly in the slightest).

Please note that the editorship is currently enjoying an iced cold coca-cola.

Comments are welcome though unappreciated. We will cut you. Enough disclaimers.

Adventures in Masr began a short while ago with a less than luxurious fully-funded coach fare to Cairo’s new, dazzling international airport, which made the much touted froufrou Frankfurt International look like a 16^th Century caravanserai, complete with belching camels. Editors suffered the usual courtesies of having their luggage thrown about by the slick expediters and received the impressed gasps of the customs clerk when presenting him with formidable, black diplomatic visas. We were whisked away in a rotted-out van and made pleasant conversation in the elegant vernacular of Modern Standard Arabic:

- My father works in New York City; I have two sisters.
- Really? I have a brother in New Jersey. He is married to the wife of my brother and owns a restaurant that serves Arabic food. Yes, they have Turkish Coffee.

A week passes for your editors at the grand villa of one of our embassy’s top diplomats. The villa is truly magnificent – tall gates, palm trees in the front garden, expansive walled-in lawn in the back, SUV in the driveway, large foyer, high ceilings, several rooms for entertaining, living quarters on the second floor, and an apartment for the hired help on the third floor where your editors slept as the hired help in this case come only during the day. The villa encompasses two lots in Cairo’s Dokki district, a five minute 75 cent taxi ride from the bustling city centers of Zamalek, Khan al-Khalili, or Mohandessin. The house is guarded by a garrison of no less than three state security guards who occupy nearly every street corner. Cairo, by the way, employs more policemen than any city.

Dear reader, your editors benefited greatly from the generous hospitality of this top diplomat and his family. Their kindness eased our transition into this intimidating metropolis of racing tin-can taxi cabs and swarms of pedestrians crossing the streets at all points at all speeds irreverent of whizzing microbuses and flailing though powerless traffic cops. Had this family not taken in your young editors, we would have been relegated to the lonely and secluded suburban enclave of Maadi.