Passports, Our Style

Yesterday was some adventure.

There is no such thing as laww ("if"), but it perhaps we should have renewed our passports before we left for Egypt. In any case, we should have at least renewed them as soon as we got to Egypt. But in uniquely AmeerMustafian-style, we left things to the last minute and so on Sunday we had to take a day-off and go to the Canadian Embassy. In the morning we feverishly checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our passports. Then as we were signing the declarations on the passports, Mustafa suddenly slumped, his body sagging as he put his forehead on the table.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"I signed, 'Mustafa Farooq, signed in Nasr City, Canada.'"

We thought we were in trouble then because the Internet cafe was closed and if we waited till it was open to download our forms, we might not make it to the embassy. Alhamdulillah Mustafa came up with the brilliant idea of ummm....getting another application at the embassy. (Please don't laugh). So with the name of Allah we left our apartment, walked down the road to Dhakir Hussein, hailed a taxi, and started our journey to Tahrir Square.

It was far, and the streets were packed with cars on their way to downtown Egypt. Suddenly the taxi driver pulled over and got out of the car. Mustafa and I were a little surprised, since we hadn't noticed anything wrong with the taxi, other than the fact it sounded like it was twenty-five years old, the transmission croaked like a frog, and someone really busy had done the paint job. The driver opened the hood and looked inside, pulled a wrench out from somewhere, dropped it back inside, whacked the horn a couple of times, went to his trunk, and pulled out a pair of pliers. After messing about in the engine for a bit more, he honked his horn to make sure it was it's usual blaring magnitude, then closed the hood. I am almost positive that he left both his wrench and the pliers inside his engine. Then we set off again, walhamdulillah.

I won't bore you with all the gory details of waiting in the embassy, but alhamdulillah it went well. Insha'allah we'll get our passports after a month.

I think I'll let Mustafa describe the next part, as I'm sure he knows more about it than me.

~Ameer