40th Birthday Blowout

So, it was my 40th birthday. I had planned on going scuba diving in Dahab at the Red Sea like I did on my 37th birthday, but Gwen invited me to go to Cairo instead. Many of you may be familiar with the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure breast cancer research runs. They have them all over the world and it just so happened they were having one at the Pyramids of Giza on October 24th. I decided that going to a run at The Pyramids with a bunch of people would be more fun than going to Dahab by myself. My goal, no crying on my birthday!

So, Friday afternoon, Gwen, her friend Jenina, and I took the train down to Cairo. Gwen and I were staying at her friend Christine's place in Zamalek. Jenina is an Egyptian-American and was going back to the States, so she invited a bunch of her friends to have dinner at a place called Sangria.

At Christine's, Gwen had made some cupcakes for my birthday. We lit the candles and did the Happy Birthday song. We headed out to the restaurant. As we were sitting there I spied two very attractive (and I figured American) men. I decided to go over and say, "Hi." Turns out they were a couple of airline pilots on their lay-over for a few days in Cairo. Poor guys had no idea what they were in for.

We decided to move the party to Harry's Pub; an Irish bar in the Marriott. I used to go there for karaoke when I lived in Cairo. Damn, no karaoke tonight. Just some stupid band. I wanted to go up and sing (I can usually schmooze my way on stage) but they blew me off. I'm afraid I'll have to fast forward through the rest of this part of the story in order to protect the innocent. Let's just say I was having a little too much fun, and Gwen dragged me out of there before I got myself into some trouble. Thanks Gwen! I think. But yay! No crying!
The next morning, I miraculously woke my ass up at 7:30 to do the run at the Pyramids. I noticed I was wearing a t-shirt but my arms weren't in the sleeves. Hmmmm, maybe I was cold. Yeah, that's it. I was cold. Once we arrived, we found that there were an estimated 5000 people present at this event. I don't think they expected quite that many and ended up running out of water. Luckily, I brought my own. The run was only about 3K, but by the time we walked up to the starting line and back down, it was at least 5K! After the run, we were both so tired from the night before, we decided to take a nap for the afternoon.

Since I hadn't had my security briefing yet, Gwen thought it would be a good idea for me to spend the night in Cairo and take care of that at the U.S. Embassy in the morning. I still wasn't feeling that great, so I decided I just wanted to get a hotel room for myself and get some sleep. I looked up a few hotels online and discovered they were all booked due to some "Bright Star" exercises. Bright Star is a multi-national exercise conducted in Egypt and co-hosted by Egypt and the United States involving tactical air, ground, naval and special operations forces field training. Conducted every two years, it is designed to enhance military cooperation among U.S. and coalition partners, by strengthening joint commitment to regional stability and mutual interests. Participants include forces from: Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States. So, I ended up at The Conrad Hotel because everything else was booked. More expensive than I really wanted to pay, but it was my birthday so what the hell?

Gwen went with me to make sure there weren't any problems. As we were standing at the front desk, she said, "Aren't the pilots staying here?" I said, "I think so." She said, "If you run into them while you're here I will die." No sooner did those words escape her mouth, Geoff (one of the pilots) walked by us. "Hey!" I said. He came over and filled us in on the details of the rest of their night. Again, I will leave them out to protect the innocent. I asked Geoff if he'd mind if I joined them for dinner. "Sure," he said. Later, the guys came to my room to pick me up. We went to one of the restaurants and ordered some food. The soup du jour was "Bird Tongue Soup." You've got to be kidding me. We decided to order it for the hell of it. It was actually really good. Like Italian Wedding Soup!

I said goodbye to the pilots (they had to head out for their flight) and I headed up to my room looking forward to a good night's sleep. I finally fell asleep around midnight. Suddenly, I was jolted awake by the phone ringing. Not my cell phone -the room phone. By the time I realized what it was -it stopped. I wondered if the pilots' flight got canceled or something. No one else knew I was staying at the hotel, so I had no clue who else it could be.

It was 1am. About 30 minutes later, my phone started ringing again. I answered it. "Hello?" A voice said, "Hello?" I asked, "Who is this?" The voice answered, "Who is this?" Then he kept saying, "In Arabic?" "In Arabic?" I hung up on him. The phone started ringing again, "Who...is...this?" I said, very slowly and deliberately in a deep voice wishing I had a man in the room with me to take the phone. All he said was, "Who...is...this?" Again, very slowly, I asked, "What... do... you... want?" Just an echo back as if he was trying to imitate me. His voice was very soft and calm. I couldn't hear any background noise and I began imagining he was in the room with me. I hung up again. This time I called the front desk. They offered to turn of the line that goes to my room. Fine. But by now I was so freaked out I couldn't get back to sleep. I got up, turned on the light, checked the bathroom, the closet, under the bed and the balcony. I shut the balcony door and noticed it wouldn't lock. "Great," I thought to myself. "He can probably rappel his way in."

Finally, around 4:30am I fell back asleep. It didn't last. At 7:00am, my phone started ringing again. I took it off the hook. I think the thing that bothered me most about it was the fact that the guy called at 1am, got no answer, but decided to try again at 1:30. Why would you call a room that you know is empty a second time? Unless, you were following someone and you knew they were in there. I didn't want to even think about it.

In the morning, I got some emails from some friends asking if I was ok. Apparently, there was a bad train crash that night that killed about a dozen people. Great, I had to take the train back the same day. Oh well. I finally arrived back in Alex. I decided to take the tram the rest of the way home. As I was walking to board the tram, I heard someone say, 'Lisa?" I looked and it was a guy I had met once, 3 years ago, in Alex. Weird and wild stuff.