"B white" and the death of a diplomat

Things are getting increasingly bizarre here in Egypt, friends.

This week, whilst in the throws of a debilitating stomach ailment, I spent a good chunk of time spacing out in front of the television, whereupon I watched an advert for a product called “B-White.”

Here’s the gist of the commercial: two pretty Arab chicks are yapping away and looking at Polaroids of themselves, grimacing at what they see. One of the girls pulls out this tube of paste, smiles and applies it to the other girl’s face. Then, this little graphic pops up and shows how the paste will actually make the user’s face whiter.

I’m not going to make any snappy pop-culture commentaries on this. It speaks for itself.

It’s also been raining here. Weird. I looked it up and it hasn’t rained in Cairo for 1,534 years. Okay, not quite. But it’s the only time I’ve seen rain since I got here – not counting Rain Man, which was on TV last month.

Had lunch with the Canadian Ambassador and the other DFAIT/CIDA interns this week, too. Emboldened by two glasses of red, I brought up a dude named Herbert Norman (pictured), Canada’s ambassador to Egypt back in the 1950s.

Long story short, Norman got swept up in the McCarthy-ist wave sweeping through diplomatic circles at the time, and because of theses accusations, he got depressed. Mega depressed.

Okay, when I get depressed, I usually go for a jog, take a shower and pour myself a long glass of whiskey and suck back a few lung darts. Herbert, however, dealt with the big Dee by throwing himself off the top of an eight-storey building in downtown Cairo. He landed on the Swedish ambassador’s car which was parked on the street below.

I’m thinking about starting a coffee-shop folk band called Herbert Norman and Eight Stories. Or maybe not. This is what Cairo can do to a man, dear friends.