22 - 28 March 2001
Issue No.526
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 March 2001 Issue No.526 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Watershed
In my school days, I could never understand why many of my companions shuddered at the sound of new chalk scratching the blackboard. I never felt the need to cover my ears or beg the teacher to stop; in the same spirit, probably, I couldn't sympathise with my husband's violent reaction whenever he heard a tap dripping somewhere in the apartment. He used to wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me to listen to the drops. He explained the concept of water torture and assured me that prisoners subjected to such persecution went mad in a matter of hours, implying that if I did not get out of bed and cause the noise to cease immediately, the same might happen to him.
An extra squeeze usually sufficed to halt the offending droplets, at least momentarily, but I was a great deal less successful one night when the cistern of the water closet began to leak rather noisily. My husband's frayed nerves couldn't take it and, as I recall it, he stormed out of the house, only returning at dawn.
Fortunately, we emigrated to Australia before these water games had time to wreck our marriage irreparably.
Australian appliances behaved much better than their Egyptian counterparts. In time, I learned to trust them and consider their efficient unobtrusiveness as normal. I even forgot about our sleepless nights in Cairo. My husband did not, though, and when he was offered a job in Egypt his first thought was to shop for faucets and a couple of cisterns with which to equip the home we would eventually set up. The faucets did not present any unusual features except a 10-year warranty, a claim they lived up to, but the cisterns were indeed special. They were of molded hard plastic with an attached toilet seat and came with a full bathroom set to boot. Their colours remained a hot topic of conversation in our household for many years. Our daughters contended that their father had picked bright orange and electric blue to steel their characters, forcing them to stand up to their peers' disparaging comments. I, on the other hand, assured them that, being colour-blind, he had not been able to tell the difference.
In any case, the cisterns were miraculously silent and in quarter of a century of daily use, they never uttered so much as a murmur.
Years went by, my husband passed away, and eventually I found myself in a position to redo the apartment. My daughter's first -- and only -- request was to get rid of the colourful cisterns. I knew that no amount of coaxing would make her change her mind, so I went looking for new bathroom appliances in pure white. I wanted the best brand available and shopped around for it. I had seen too many defective toilets by then not to be extremely careful. I chose a model that promised a 10-year guarantee and asked the original agents to install the cisterns. That it took two weeks before they finally turned up to do the job was no trouble at all, compared to my daughter's joy at having the aberrant colours banned from our bathrooms.
From day one I knew I had committed a fatal mistake. We are now on familiar terms with every plumber in Cairo, several coming to Maadi from as far as Mohandessin, Doqqi and Faggala, and charging us for taxi fare as well, needless to say. Last Thursday, Youssri, who has become yet another habitué of our bathrooms, came to take a look at the new disorder my cistern had developed overnight. He fiddled for a while, then announced as usual that everything was in order. He departed in a hurry, without taking time to finish his glass of tea. I left soon after him.
On my return late at night, I heard a rumbling noise as I was parking my car. It seemed to come from our building, and I stupidly wondered if the Metro line had been detoured and was now passing under our house. As I climbed to my third floor I realised that the noise was coming from my apartment. It sounded like a continuous roar, but with a hum in the background. Someone was digging, with a jackhammer, in my own home! To my dismay, I discovered that the din was coming from my bathroom. The pipes were shuddering, the water heater was shaking and there was nothing I could do at two in the morning. Watching the news on television, listening to music or reading were all out of the question. Eventually I discovered that if I opened the cold water faucet in the basin to its full capacity, the pipes stopped their racket. With the swishing of the water in my ears, I slept soundly out of pure spite.
"It's like this," said Youssri in the morning. "There is too much pressure in the pipes. It is caused by a manufacturing fault in your cistern. I can release the pressure and silence the pipes by letting your cistern leak into the water-closet, and then you won't have to keep the water running in the basin. The other thing you could do is change the whole combination, but there is no guarantee that the new set will not also act up. All these imported models are flawed. We only get the rejects here, so finally it is a matter of luck."
As I lie awake, listening to Niagara Falls tumbling into the lavatory, I know that I am confronted with a tough decision. I miss the dainty drops of water that used to drive my husband out of his mind. But more than anything else, I want my electric blue cistern back.
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