I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia (21 page)

Finally, in August, after more than four months in Egypt, we were freed from the confines of hotel life. We moved into an enormous flat in Maadi before our stuff actually arrived “from Customs” because we wanted to get the boys acclimated to the area and have them meet some other kids before starting school in September. Maadi is the area in Cairo where most expats lived, mainly because Cairo American College (CAC), the American school for grades K through 12, is located there. Unfortunately, most families were away traveling in August, so there were not too many people around for the boys to meet and play with. But the four of us did spend a lot of time exploring and familiarizing ourselves with the grounds of the school—the playgrounds, the soccer fields, and the Olympic-size swimming pool and diving well. Because there was nothing to really do in the flat until our stuff arrived, we also spent lots of time outside investigating the community of Maadi and discovering things like a grocery store, Goma Degla; the post office; and Road 9, a stretch of shops and restaurants. There were also gorgeous softball fields in Maadi, where I eventually played first base and became one of the league’s top home-run hitters for the expat team the Jewels of the Nile and the all-star team the Cairo Cruisers.

I had never had a hard time finding work in health clubs before, and I thought that there would be dozens of gyms needing
instructors in Cairo just like in Maryland. But there weren’t. I don’t exactly know how I found out about Samia Aluba’s Creative Dance and Fitness. Maybe it was something that Wagdi told us about, or maybe the real estate people who were showing us available flats in Maadi, or someone at Cairo American College when we registered the boys for school, I honestly don’t know. I also don’t recall any kind of interview or audition process with Samia, although I’m sure there was some sort of official hiring procedure. I do think that I started teaching classes there in the evenings before we moved to Maadi, while we were still living in the hotel. Jim recalls that Wagdi would drive all five of us to Maadi, and I would teach a class while he and Wagdi took the kids to play or swim at Cairo American College.

Creative Dance and Fitness was a very different sort of club from the ones I knew. A lot of the equipment was unfamiliar, people wore unusual workout attire and shoes, some of the music was strange to my ears, and the safety, education, and training techniques were different to me. It was a very small club overall, but the aerobics studio was quite large and airy, with huge windows along the whole back wall. I loved teaching classes in that room! And I loved working for Samia. She was the most amazing person, well educated and well spoken, beautiful, smart, kind, and in fabulous shape. Because her studio was in Maadi, nearly everyone spoke English, but there were some distinctive customs that I had to learn. For example, we instructors were
never
allowed to set up our own steps; there were paid “boys” for that. And the same went for other equipment as well, whether it was mats, weights, or straps. Some of my aerobics music was deemed “inappropriate,” and Samia very gently explained to me that she did not want her members to be offended by provocative lyrics. To be honest, I had never really
listened to many of the lyrics on my pre-made aerobics tapes. I mostly only paid attention to the speed and the beat of the music. The same went for what I wore. There were a few women who regularly took classes in long loose garments. Their arms, legs, and bodies were, for the most part, fully covered. Samia warmly (but firmly) suggested to me early on that I wear T-shirts over my tiny jog bras when I taught. Obviously not everyone who belonged to this studio was Egyptian or even Muslim. And certainly not all of the Egyptian Muslims who showed up to take my classes would have been offended by my music or dress, but Samia kept a certain standard, and she was enormously respected for that.

I had not been teaching at Samia’s club for too long when I approached her and asked if I might be able to put together some kind of training program for the other instructors. (After all, I had been teaching for all of five or six years, so I was
obviously
an expert.) After learning to teach aerobics in the litigious society that was suburban Washington, D.C., I was hyperaware of the many “contraindicated aspects of exercise” that should
never be done
in any group setting. When I noticed many movements were being done “improperly” (to my mind) in other classes in Samia’s studio, I think it drove me a little bit crazy. I had been always told in no uncertain terms that there were “proper” and “correct” and “acceptable” ways of warming up, stretching, and teaching various movements in order to avoid injury. It had been all but beaten into me while teaching at previous gyms that anything that deviated from the correct ways was not only wrong but also downright harmful. And let’s not forget that I was (am) a
total
rule follower, with a definite
right
way and a definite
wrong
way to do stuff.

Surprisingly, Samia agreed to let me set up a little training program for her instructors. She also suggested that any other members
who were interested in learning more specifically about safety, and more generally about other teaching techniques, were welcome to attend. Little did I realize then the rabbit hole I was headed down. Not all of Samia’s instructors were on board with this little in-house training of mine, but enough people were that I considered it a success. I ended up using my copy of the ACE (American Council on Exercise) manual to teach from because there were lots of pictures that I understood. This way I thought I could easily explain to people the “whys” and “why not’s” of group exercise. Several attendees of this program approached me and Samia afterward, and asked about the manual I had used and where they could buy their own copies. I explained about ACE, and that the books were only sent to people who were interested in becoming ACE-certified aerobics instructors.

Before I knew what had happened, Samia had ordered a dozen ACE Aerobics Instructor Manuals, and put me in charge of teaching a course to interested members and instructors who wanted to become ACE-certified instructors! I had no clue what I had gotten myself into, but fortunately for me, everyone who decided to sign up and take this class, as well as Samia herself, was eager, enthusiastic, and motivated, in addition to being extremely patient with me. Little by little, week after week, my confidence increased. I did have a lot of practical experience teaching, and I became better at figuring stuff out, even if I couldn’t always read and understand the exact technicalities of everything written in the manual. Samia helped me set up a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) course to be taught at Cairo American College specifically for these twelve people, as well as an ACE examination team, which included proctors, to come to Cairo in order to administer the ACE Aerobics Instructor Exam. In the end, I think (but am not 100 percent sure)
that all twelve took the exam and passed. And many of the people who started out just as interested participants began teaching at Creative Dance and Fitness soon after successfully completing the class and the exam.

When I left Cairo, Samia threw a big party. She and other members contributed to a gift fund, and bought me a twenty-four-karat-gold cartouche with my name, Susan, in hieroglyphics. I have hardly ever taken it off since it was given to me back in the spring of 1997.

School started up in September. Benjamin and Patrick attended Cairo American College and I enrolled Kassidy in a Montessori preschool program close by. This was the first time I had all three kids in school. And even though Kassidy was just gone for a few hours in the mornings, it gave me time to teach aerobics at Creative Dance and Fitness without experiencing the guilt that I always felt when I had to put the kids in the nursery in order to work. I volunteered in both of the boys’ classrooms once or twice a week, reading aloud, alphabetizing graded papers, or helping with bulletin boards.

The school week in Egypt went from Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. The majority of expats spent most of every Friday at the softball fields because almost everything else was closed, as Friday is the holy day for Muslims. I cannot remember playing softball before going to Egypt, and I have no recollection of being taught how to play, but by far the happiest memories I have of all our time in Cairo are those that occurred on those softball fields. God, it was a blast! Herb was our coach, 100 percent Texan, through and through. Alison, his Aussie girlfriend, played shortstop, and her best friend, Ruthie, also an Aussie with flaming-red hair, was either our pitcher or catcher depending on the lineup. My good friend Heather Corkin, a “Kiwi” from New Zealand, played second base or in the outfield, as did my friend Valerie, another American. Being a lefty, with long legs, I played first base exclusively. I caught nearly anything and everything that was ever thrown to or at me, while often having to stretch in order to keep my foot on the bag. I was also a particularly fast runner, nicknamed “Cheetah” by my teammates, and I was a strong power hitter, especially when Herb let me use his double-wall bat. However, I never quite got a handle on the throwing part, and I pretty much always sucked whenever I had to throw the ball to anyone.

So much of life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it will. I always believed and trusted Jim, and I hoped that when we moved to Egypt, we would be able to live our lives together as a family of five, with two parents working equally as parents to
our
three children. Unfortunately, Jim was just as much of a workaholic as he had always been. And even though he didn’t have to travel, per se, he still worked absurdly long hours, as well as most weekends, so the kids and I still rarely saw him. I was just as exhausted a single parent in Cairo as I had ever been living in Maryland. Jim did hire Emiline, a Filipina maid, to help with the cleaning, as it was nearly impossible to keep up with the dust and dirt that seemed to relentlessly seep through the tiny cracks in the windows and doors to cover any and every surface. But the children, with their schoolwork, activities, meals, bedtimes, not to mention each of their individual adjustments to a new home, school, classmates, teachers, culture, food. . . . all of that fell to me.

I wasn’t adjusting too well to the substantial changes in my life, either. I enjoyed teaching aerobics, and I loved playing softball, but there was a lot that was getting to me. As a relatively selfish American, coming from a fairly upper middle-class suburb, I was used to having electricity, water, and phone service most, if not all, the time. In Cairo, we would have one of those things, occasionally two, but never all three. The kids and I were stranded in the tiny elevator once early on when the power went out; nobody (myself included) wanted to ride that elevator ever again. That was five flights up and five flights down with a four-year-old whenever I wanted to go anywhere. The flies and mosquitoes were persistent both inside and outside the flat. I got tired of feeling dirty and dusty all of the time. I was both dependent on, and limited by, my bike and the Burley trailer to go anywhere or do anything. If I needed to go grocery shopping, for example, and I had Kassidy with me, I was limited to buying only what I could fit into the trailer alongside her. It was just an awful lot of change for me to try to understand all at once.