The frustration of not knowing the culture

Tonight I've been feeling a bit "argh" due to simple things just winding me up. It's only over relatively trivial matters, but my imagination of "what could go wrong" often runs away with me and so I've been feeling a bit headless-chicken-ified as everything is magnified by the language barrier.

Tonight's panic has been about rent. Last month our landlady came round to the apartment to collect the rent in person. However, had she been 5 minutes later we'd have been out as we were going shopping. So...she was lucky!

This time the end of the month falls on the Eid holiday, and as such is likely to be a nightmare for everyone wanting to carry out financial transactions. We've already had enough hassle finding a cash machine that actually had money available to withdraw, but my panic was about getting the money to our landlady. She speaks no English, and we speak no Arabic other than basic words picked up from the phrasebook, so we haven't set a routine for rent collection. My assumption was that she would come round on an off-chance in order to collect the rent, but there has been no sign of her...and we're away for the next two days visiting to pyramids at Saqqara and staying in a swanky hotel downtown.

My over-active imagination has had me panicking about what would happen if she came for rent, but didn't get it for another 2-3 days, and so I was up trying to work out what to do. Fortunately we had her son's mobile number (who speaks very good English) so we sent him a text asking for advice! He told us to leave the rent with the bowab (doorman) and his mother would collect it tomorrow morning. Sorted!

Our phrasebook came in handy to say "rent", "landlady", "tomorrow morning" accompanied with animated gesticulations, but I think that he understood what I was trying to explain. However, he then asked me some other things in Arabic - now presumably mistaking me as fluent in the language following my convincing show - which I completely failed to understand. He asked if "house" was "hallas" (finished). Erm...yes, we've moved in and so it's finished. He looked disappointingly at the rent envelope and said "hallas". "Oh," I thought, "is he asking if we've finished with the apartment and moving out?" "La! (No!)" I said. Again, a puzzled look. Basically, I have no idea what he was asking and he has no idea what my positive then negative responses were all about. I seriously hope it wasn't about whether he should say tell her we were handing in our notice!

I gave him 2LE for doing the favour of handing the money to our landlady for us, and as we made our pleasantries he counted the four 50piastre notes. "Oh no," I thought, and still am thinking. "Did I not give him enough?"

So, basically, I'm feeling a bit lost and a bit helpless at the moment as I so desperately want to get along with everyone here and do the things that are expected of me, but feel I'm wallowing a bit due to not really knowing what I'm meant to be doing, nor knowing the words to ask what I'm meant to be doing, nor knowing the words to understand the reply. Even just knowing what is an acceptable amount to give to the bowab as baksheesh for doing a trivial task like handing over the rent mone to the landlady is beyond me at the moment.

Still, after my worrying it'll probably be the case that everything will work out fine and I'll be kicking myself for getting so worked up about it. I just need to remind myself that the rent is with the doorman, as requested by the landlady's son, and the doorman has made a couple of LE out of it that he otherwise wouldn't have got.

Now to get reading up on Saqqara...