I often feel like trying to get anything accomplished in this country is a nearly impossible, ridiculously laughable experience. I am frequently reminded that I have yet to adapt to this “inshallah bukra,” “God willing tomorrow” (translation: “maybe never”) culture.
We live in an enclosed apartment on the first floor of a very old building. Despite the apartment’s remodeling, an outbreak of dark brown and green mold surfaced on our freshly painted walls. That’s what you get after two straight weeks of pouring rain combined with a lack of air circulation. Even after we tried scrubbing the walls with bleach and water, the mold keeps coming back. It got so bad that even our couches got all moldy, and we’ve since had to throw them away.
With this, we’ve repeatedly asked the landlord to fix this mold problem, which has been quite a SAGA trying to explain just why this is so concerning and unhealthy for us! After a little over two months, many weeks, many days of seeing different people look at the problem and poke at our walls as if they actually knew what they were doing, workers finally came to our home to allegedly fix this problem.
I thought we had clearly explained to the landlord that we needed someone to remove the paint and CLEAN the mold and disinfect our walls and ceilings of bacteria. She assured us she would take care of this problem, da da da da da DA. One man came and simply painted over the mold, which is apparently typical here. I cringed. After trying to explain to him that this was not sufficient to kill the bacteria and get rid of the mold, he got very angry with me, as he exclaimed, “I KNOW HOW TO WORK!” Long story short, we got into a little tiff, and he walked out. Very frustrating, but at least my Arabic language acquisition has reached a point where I can now make a man hate me. We found out from our landlord that he traveled back to his country of origin the next day. Oh, goody.
Another worker also came. He worked a full day and took a whole lot of breaks. I mean, a whoooole lot of breaks. He came back the day after (which I was pleasantly shocked by, since I have barely any hope left in these people at this point), at exactly the time he said he would arrive. He worked on our walls for about an hour and then asked for my permission to leave so he could “buy a paint brush from a store close by.” I ushered him out thinking he’d be back in 15 minutes. He never came back. I waited all morning, afternoon, and evening. He never came back.
Friends, such is life in the Middle East. And now I want to say it loud and proud: I love you, America, I love you. Your health standards, punctuality, and customer-satisfaction guarantees. I really, really love you.
