Wednesday, June 08, 2005
The Land of Milk and...Driers
I am doing the laundry right now. It isn't an easy task, as I have to haul the dirty clothes down the hallway to the washer and drier that our motel provides for its guests. I have to watch the facility because there are clothing thieves on the premises, and I have to stop my post every five minutes, hang out the door and peer down the hallway to make sure that no one is "checking out what's in the washer today." I haven't yet figured out whether I would shout obscenities at potential underwear crooks or whether I would actually chase them down. I would hope that merely putting in an appearance would keep them away, but this is a strange place full of strange people that might actually kill me for my socks. You think I'm kidding.
However, I am thankful for the drier. We didn't have one in Egypt. We had a back balcony with a very ragged "clothes line" salvaged from the storage space under one of the beds when we moved into the apartment. Learning how to hang the clothes on a clothes line was quite an interesting thing. Let me first tell you about the process of actually washing the clothes, which has it's own form of twisted humor. I came from a land where if you didn't have a washer and drier, you drove (or walked) your laundry to a laundromat, where for about three dollars a load, you could be in and out in an hour and a half, go home and continue whatever it was you were doing previously. My Egyptian "washer" was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun's slave, Abd'el Wash'Teb. It was not an automatic washer and to make matters worse, it was olive green. One half of the washer was a tub that held water and swished it around, while the other half, which some people call the "drier" is a tub that is used for spinning the clothes. I performed the washday ritual once or twice a week. First, I had to drag the washer, heavy as it was, from one room, over the wooden door rail and through the bathroom door, lifting it up and over the marble door stop. I attached a hose from the sink faucet and let the other end hang into the washtub, turning on the hot water and letting it run. While the tub was filling, I unhooked a hose from the side of the washer which was attached to the bottom and was meant for draining, leaving the open end in the shower tub so that all water leaving the washer would go directly down the shower drain, and then placed a big red plastic tub into the shower, filling it with cold water. I poured a cup of laundry soap and bleach into the washer because this first load was always the "whites", and started putting the white pieces in one by one. Turning the cycle to the number 10 (meaning 10 minutes), I was free for that amount of time to do something else while I waited...usually washing the dishes to see if I could actually "beat" the washer by finishing all of the dishes before the machine stopped. When it did stop, I returned to the bathroom, clothed in my shorts, sleeveless shirt and flip-flops (no socks), prepared for my dip in the tub. Each piece had to be retrieved from the washer and wrung out by hand before being placed into the red tub to be rinsed. Once I had sufficiently wriggled the pieces around in the red tub, trusting that they had been rinsed enough, I pulled them out one by one and carried them dripping madly back to the washer where I placed them into the wringer side. By this time, I was always soaked to the skin, and slipping around on the slimy bleach/detergent water spilled on the floor. (Egyptian bathrooms have a drain in the floor, much like a shower drain, because many of them do not do shower curtains.) Once done, I closed the lid and turned the knob onto 2, which meant two minutes. After this, they each went into the laundry basket and waited while I turned the washer knob to "drain", so that all of the water would exit the washer while I hung the clothes to dry. Upon returning from the back balcony (which I named "the Drier", naturally), I refilled the washer with cold water for the light colors, and repeated the steps. I usually did about four or five loads of clothes this way, because with this type of washer, I couldn't put in a large load, nor could I mix certain colors. There were the "whites", the "lights", the "reds", the "greens", the "blues/blacks" and the "miscellaneous" loads, each one needing its own fresh tub of water and detergent. During the entire process, I got soaked, the floor was an inch deep in water and I sweated, panted, huffed, grunted, and cursed all at the same time.
As each load finished, I would carry the laundry basket out to the "drier" to be hanged by the seams until dry. The doorway to the balcony was extremely narrow, made nearly impassible by the sewage pipe in front of it that ran from the upper floors all the way to below ground level. The only way to get the oversized pink laundry basket through the door was to make sure that the handles pointed toward and away from me rather than side by side as they added just that much to the size of the basket so that it wouldn't fit. As it was, I had to squeeze the sides a little to let it pass through. The passage resembled a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. Once through, I set the basket down on the floor of the balcony, hoping that nothing accidently dropped out as it was extremely dirty, filled with dust, sand, and pigeon poop. Grabbing a handful of clothespins from a dirty muslin bag that was pinned to a cord that ran from the clothesline, which hung from the outside of the balcony, to the sewage pipe, I placed all but two into an old coffee can that sat on the edge of the railing. I grabbed the top piece of clothing, wrestled with it until it was in the position in which it would be pinned to the clothesline and leaned over the railing to the outer line. (The clothesline consisted of two metal brackets to which five lines were tied about two and a half feet deep and four feet wide.) I would hang on for dear life to the laundry as I pinned it to the first side, as we were ten floors up and I didn't relish the thought of having to go down to the bottom to retrieve laundry that would never be the same again. Then, holding onto that piece, I would stretch as far as I could to the basket and grab another piece of laundry and another clothespin. Always the clothespins were shared, as one by one they would disappear. Sometimes the wind would whip the clothes around so brusquely that the clothespins would literally pop off. However, sometimes, I just didn't have the grip on the sucker that it required and it sprung out of my fingers when I tried to squeeze it open. Someone downstairs had a lot of clothespins. I would work this way back and forth on each line until all the laundry was hung, and each hour I would check its progress. In the summer, sometimes the clothes would be dry in less than two hours. But, in the winter, we had to cover the clothes with a plastic sheet, otherwise the rain would make the drying useless, and they would take sometimes two days to be completely dry. I didn't like washday! The sad thing is that many Egyptians now have automatic washers. Some of the wealthy even have driers, but most people don't even know what a drier IS!
Now that I've finished expounding upon the glories of the Egyptian system of clean clothes, my own laundry is finished. I am thankful now that I can use a drier and be done with it, and that I don't have to be completely aware of the whole rinse/spin cycle thing. I can just put the clothes in the washer, and do something else for a half hour, put them in the drier, and in a small amount of time, put them in the drawer.
Someday Egypt will have driers, and they will be all the rage, like the Mercedes. You never know, maybe they will discover Dr. Pepper at the same time.
However, I am thankful for the drier. We didn't have one in Egypt. We had a back balcony with a very ragged "clothes line" salvaged from the storage space under one of the beds when we moved into the apartment. Learning how to hang the clothes on a clothes line was quite an interesting thing. Let me first tell you about the process of actually washing the clothes, which has it's own form of twisted humor. I came from a land where if you didn't have a washer and drier, you drove (or walked) your laundry to a laundromat, where for about three dollars a load, you could be in and out in an hour and a half, go home and continue whatever it was you were doing previously. My Egyptian "washer" was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun's slave, Abd'el Wash'Teb. It was not an automatic washer and to make matters worse, it was olive green. One half of the washer was a tub that held water and swished it around, while the other half, which some people call the "drier" is a tub that is used for spinning the clothes. I performed the washday ritual once or twice a week. First, I had to drag the washer, heavy as it was, from one room, over the wooden door rail and through the bathroom door, lifting it up and over the marble door stop. I attached a hose from the sink faucet and let the other end hang into the washtub, turning on the hot water and letting it run. While the tub was filling, I unhooked a hose from the side of the washer which was attached to the bottom and was meant for draining, leaving the open end in the shower tub so that all water leaving the washer would go directly down the shower drain, and then placed a big red plastic tub into the shower, filling it with cold water. I poured a cup of laundry soap and bleach into the washer because this first load was always the "whites", and started putting the white pieces in one by one. Turning the cycle to the number 10 (meaning 10 minutes), I was free for that amount of time to do something else while I waited...usually washing the dishes to see if I could actually "beat" the washer by finishing all of the dishes before the machine stopped. When it did stop, I returned to the bathroom, clothed in my shorts, sleeveless shirt and flip-flops (no socks), prepared for my dip in the tub. Each piece had to be retrieved from the washer and wrung out by hand before being placed into the red tub to be rinsed. Once I had sufficiently wriggled the pieces around in the red tub, trusting that they had been rinsed enough, I pulled them out one by one and carried them dripping madly back to the washer where I placed them into the wringer side. By this time, I was always soaked to the skin, and slipping around on the slimy bleach/detergent water spilled on the floor. (Egyptian bathrooms have a drain in the floor, much like a shower drain, because many of them do not do shower curtains.) Once done, I closed the lid and turned the knob onto 2, which meant two minutes. After this, they each went into the laundry basket and waited while I turned the washer knob to "drain", so that all of the water would exit the washer while I hung the clothes to dry. Upon returning from the back balcony (which I named "the Drier", naturally), I refilled the washer with cold water for the light colors, and repeated the steps. I usually did about four or five loads of clothes this way, because with this type of washer, I couldn't put in a large load, nor could I mix certain colors. There were the "whites", the "lights", the "reds", the "greens", the "blues/blacks" and the "miscellaneous" loads, each one needing its own fresh tub of water and detergent. During the entire process, I got soaked, the floor was an inch deep in water and I sweated, panted, huffed, grunted, and cursed all at the same time.
As each load finished, I would carry the laundry basket out to the "drier" to be hanged by the seams until dry. The doorway to the balcony was extremely narrow, made nearly impassible by the sewage pipe in front of it that ran from the upper floors all the way to below ground level. The only way to get the oversized pink laundry basket through the door was to make sure that the handles pointed toward and away from me rather than side by side as they added just that much to the size of the basket so that it wouldn't fit. As it was, I had to squeeze the sides a little to let it pass through. The passage resembled a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. Once through, I set the basket down on the floor of the balcony, hoping that nothing accidently dropped out as it was extremely dirty, filled with dust, sand, and pigeon poop. Grabbing a handful of clothespins from a dirty muslin bag that was pinned to a cord that ran from the clothesline, which hung from the outside of the balcony, to the sewage pipe, I placed all but two into an old coffee can that sat on the edge of the railing. I grabbed the top piece of clothing, wrestled with it until it was in the position in which it would be pinned to the clothesline and leaned over the railing to the outer line. (The clothesline consisted of two metal brackets to which five lines were tied about two and a half feet deep and four feet wide.) I would hang on for dear life to the laundry as I pinned it to the first side, as we were ten floors up and I didn't relish the thought of having to go down to the bottom to retrieve laundry that would never be the same again. Then, holding onto that piece, I would stretch as far as I could to the basket and grab another piece of laundry and another clothespin. Always the clothespins were shared, as one by one they would disappear. Sometimes the wind would whip the clothes around so brusquely that the clothespins would literally pop off. However, sometimes, I just didn't have the grip on the sucker that it required and it sprung out of my fingers when I tried to squeeze it open. Someone downstairs had a lot of clothespins. I would work this way back and forth on each line until all the laundry was hung, and each hour I would check its progress. In the summer, sometimes the clothes would be dry in less than two hours. But, in the winter, we had to cover the clothes with a plastic sheet, otherwise the rain would make the drying useless, and they would take sometimes two days to be completely dry. I didn't like washday! The sad thing is that many Egyptians now have automatic washers. Some of the wealthy even have driers, but most people don't even know what a drier IS!
Now that I've finished expounding upon the glories of the Egyptian system of clean clothes, my own laundry is finished. I am thankful now that I can use a drier and be done with it, and that I don't have to be completely aware of the whole rinse/spin cycle thing. I can just put the clothes in the washer, and do something else for a half hour, put them in the drier, and in a small amount of time, put them in the drawer.
Someday Egypt will have driers, and they will be all the rage, like the Mercedes. You never know, maybe they will discover Dr. Pepper at the same time.
