Thanksgiving in Cairo

Lying here on the couch in my pjs in a Friday-afternoon, post-leftover-pie-eating stupor, I'm here to report that our first-ever Thanksgiving in Egypt was a success. My roommate Emilie and I spent the better part of yesterday at our friend Patrick's apartment cooking, and despite never having hosted Thanksgiving dinner sans parents before, we managed to pull it off admirably. It was unconventional (the turkey was thawed in the bathtub), fraught with unexpected difficulties (it took us many days of combing ex-pat grocery stores to find a single $10 can of pumpkin), and nearly disastrous (the cigarette lighter that exploded on the manually lighting gas stove), but when all ten of us--seven Americans and three Egyptians--sat down together to eat turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, yams, and pumpkin pie, I've gotta say, Uncle Sam would've been proud.

My stomach still feels uncomfortably stretched from packing it so very full of food last night, which--however unpleasant--is how one's stomach is supposed to feel the day after Thanksgiving, and my head is throbbing dully from the quantities of wine I consumed to wash down the aforementioned turkey. In the time-honored tradition of nursing one's holiday-related physical ailments for all they're worth, I've spent the morning watching a John Cusack movie on TV while nibbling on cold leftovers and rehashing last night's gossip with Emilie. There's is a particular self-indulgent frame of mind that is the special province of the holiday season, where we generously hand ourselves a carte blanche to overeat, overdrink, and neglect our personal hygiene. I feel myself slipping into it now. Already the apple pie is calling to me from the fridge, enticing me to cut myself just one more modest sliver, and how well it would go with a square of that white cheddar we bought for omelets last weekend! If only we had a microwave. Our apartment is a dump, I haven't showered since yesterday morning, and I'm seriously considering going back to bed. The holidays have surely, even in Egypt, a country that celebrates neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas, begun.

Here's something to think about: Does anyone actually like turkey? We're coerced yearly by the purveyors of mass-market American traditionalism into forcing ourselves to eat something none of us enjoys...doesn't anyone but me find this worrisome?