good friday

I am not even sure what Good Friday is all about....But I did my first Passover last week...interesting. Lots of plagues and wine and prayer. I like the Jewish rituals more than the Christian ones for some wierd-ass reason. Perhaps because I don't speak Hebrew, and I don't understand them, and I never had anyone trying to shove them down my throat as a child. Not that anyone tried to shove Christianity down my throat as a child...we were pretty much heathens in my household. I knew more about Islam than anything from hearing the call-to-prayer five times a day for 4 years. I remember after my first drunk, at the age of 12, cleaning up my friend's puke and scared to face her mom and then the five a.m. prayer started. She had an amazing house, but it happened to be right next door to a huge mosque. Not what a hung-over 12 year old yearns to hear. Her mom blamed the whole drunk episode on me, and I was banned from playing with her ever again. Looking back it, seems strange that after getting DRUNK I wasn't allowed to PLAY with her again. The irony didn't strike me then. I thought I was tough and cool and grown-up as I walked through early morning Ma'adi to my house and the grounding that awaited me. I didn't really mind being grounded. I could still steal my dad's whisky and hang out with my sister or brother. We'd go on the roof and watch the soldiers visit the hookers next door. My brother and sister both smoked and so I started too. I'd play dress-up at my friend Angie's house with her 1800-period-costumes and then we'd sneak out back to smoke butts found in the yard. I'd make mud-pies in the canal and buy tobacco from the kiosk by the school. My sister skipped third period to go buy a bunch of qualudes and passed out during art. I had art after her and cried and was scared and yelled at her because big brother Geoff would never do drugs...Ha. If I had only known. I'd steal scotch and vodka all week in a thermos and meet my friends at the movie at the Ma'adi Club on Thursday night. We'd sneak out to the tennis courts and get loaded and let the boys touch our little breasts through our shirts. I remember jumping the fence to the school and giving the guards a bottle of wine to let us stay. Amazing that a group of twelve year olds could wander around Cairo in the middle of the night and not get killed or raped. One of my sister's friends got kidnapped and raped by police or something but she was an Embassy kid and it was all hushed up and she was sent back to Canada so as not to create an international incident, just when Carter was making nice with Begin and Sadaat and the world was witnessing a miracle they thought might just last.