So this morning I get a call from my friend Rachel who is coming to pick me up at 11:30…to continue our quest to redecorate the coffee shop located on the bottom floor of our center. So I head down the stairs and push the button to unlock the big iron front door/gate that lets us into our apartment building. Nothing happens. My friend Lauren reaches her hands through the bars and trying to put the key and unlock it from the outside. Nothing happens. I hear Rachel honking wildly in the street….I can’t get out!!!!! So I call my other roommate who is upstairs and ask her to buzz me out. I hear the noise..nothing happens! So I call Rachel and tell her I’m locked in my house. At this point, this ordeal has become neighborhood news. The landlady come out of her 1st level apartment (separate door to the outside) and tries to help us. She’s a sweet old woman who speaks hardly any English. The woman in the 2nd floor apt next to us has been watching and now yells down at my landlady. Can’t they get out of another door? No she shouts back, there isn’t one, we had it covered up years ago. So she asks us to call someone. Rachel calls our fix it man Khader and we look for another way out.
My apartment on the 2nd floor, has a huge backyard space that we can get through off the back door of our kitchen. We go out and start looking at which walls we can scale, and a way down to the street. The wall over to the neighbors yard is small, but I’m not sure if there’s a way down to the street. Now there are 2 women next door shouting that we can climb over. So I jump on top the bunny cage(yes, we have a bunny), and climb over the wall onto a pile of cinder blocks. A girls runs quickly with a chair(it appears safer) and I reach firm ground. She invites us in, and now we are standing on her landing. She speaks to me n Arabic, and I, since my speaking abilities are still ridiculously poor, speak back in English and random Arabic words. She invites us for tea, but I tell her we need to get to the street, can we use her stairs? Yes, she says, for free. J Funny one, this woman.
So Lauren and I safely join Rachel and my landlady on the street waiting for fix it guy. Its 90 degrees and hot, landlady asks us to come in for Nescafe. If you insist….I don’t particularly like Nescafe…or hot drinks when I’m sweating, but sure! We go in, make small chat, and find out Khader has gone to the wrong apartment. We redirect him, and make some more small chat. Finally he comes, and jiggles the door, puts the key in, and opens the door. Seriously? It was not doing that 10 minutes ago, we promise! It really was stuck, ugh. Well now I feel bad, but we need to go, so off we go.
About 30 minutes later we get another call from my roommate who is freaking out about something being broken and water everywhere. Khader is called again. I head home, and find my roommate behind our washing machine holding her hand over a pipe, water trying to burst out at full force. I tell her Khader is almost here. Apparently there’s a key to our roof door somewhere in this house. If we can get on the roof, we can shut off the water. So I scrounge around, not finding anything. Khader comes and starts messing with the pipe. Water is now bursting forth all over. I saw my chances of having a shower later this week slowly start to dwindle. We find the key and head to the roof, trying to locate which water tanks are ours. Our apartment has two tanks that are filled every Wednesday. When you run out, you run out, end of story. Until the next Wednesday. So today is Thursday, chances of me being able to shower come Monday or Tuesday? We shall see. Water shut off successfully, we head downstairs to wait til Khader is done and as he leaves, we promise that we will not call him again…today.:)
Welcome to the neighborhood....
Here's a bit of the wall we scaled to get to freedom.
1 comment:
Wow I think you might end up having a lot of adventures!!! I am glad I get to keep up with you and all that is happening!! love ya
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