French Conversation

The resort beach at the far end of town has some rather fine windsurfing on offer, and I figured that, with the water relatively warm and the wind relatively low, here would be a good place for Z to learn..

So, of course, did Z.

Until he got there, obviously.

“WOW!” says Z. “Banana boats! I totally want to do that! And, OH MY GOD, what’s this?!”

“No,” I say, on reflex, eyeing the entirely passive inflatables my son is clearly targeting in lieu of wholesome, improving, educational windsurfing, and then feel guilty.

“I’ll make you a good deal,” says the guy with the plastic crap. “Cigarette?”

“Just had one,” I say. He’s got both our numbers, down pat. “But, thank you.”

Z scales a small pile of inflatables and brings them crashing to the ground. “This looks amazing!” he says. “Look, Mum! It’s a two man tube and they tow it behind the speedboat. We HAVE to do this….”

“No,” I say. I’m feeling fragile, and being chucked out of a giant rubber ring at 40mph into 26 degree water is not my idea of fun at this point in time.

“10 Euros for ten minutes,” says the guy. “But for you, I’ll do 60 Egyptian.”

Oh god, I think…

I’ve only just got my son back, I’ve got a shedload of work on, and now I’m refusing to spend a measly six squid on tubing behind a speedboat?!

“Why don’t we come back with L?” I say (Z has acquired a friend of his sort of age, plus a bike with which to visit him). “Then you can do it with him!”

“Why don’t the two of us do it now, and then do it AGAIN with L?” Z counters.

“Because….” I begin weakly…

By the time we get back to the only windsurfing place that didn’t want the price of TWO (count’em) dives for an hour on a windsurfing board with an instructor, they’re about to shut.

“Anyway,” the chap says. “There’s no wind.”

“No wind?” I say, eyeing the millpond sea. “I thought that was a GOOD thing with a junior learning. As in, he’d actually be able to lift the sail up.”

“You need SOME wind,” the chap explains, speaking VERY slowly and VERY carefully. “Because without any wind, even if he gets everything right, he won’t actually go anywhere. You need the wind,” he amplifies, “To move the board.”

Never fear. There is a ball. There are a couple of Bedouin kids.

And, within seconds, Z is playing with the ball and the kids in the water.

Eyeing the bikini-clad women on this resort beach, I figure it is safe not only to get into the water but – oh gentle reader, forgive me for I have spent too long in Lebanon – to remove my singlet, if not my shorts, and actually wear a bikini in Egypt.

They’re young kids, which, given Z has inherited my hand-eye coordination, is no bad thing, and he’s placing the ball nicely for them and being very tolerant when they misthrow.

It’s all terribly sweet and intercultural and all that. I throw the ball with them for a bit. The bikini top seems to be fine.

And so, gentle reader, I figure I’ll go for a little swim …

Not a very satisfactory swim, since the beach shelves so gently – what is it with these resort beaches? Did someone do a survey that proved tourists prefer wading to swimming? — that you have to walk out about half a mile to swim.

So, not exactly a swim…

But I can do that thing they do in all the tourist brochures! Wear a bikini! Go into the sea! Stand there admiring the mountains and the landscape, and have a little dip.

Maybe I’ll even look like one of the women in the brochures!

Well, yeah, I’ll keep my shorts on, but maybe tomorrow I could actually wear only a bikini?! The other girls seem to be doing just fine and my stomach sorely needs some sun.

“Bonjour, madame,” says a rather portly gentleman, whose position in the water indicates he is responsible for the kids. “Ça va bien?”

“Bonjour,” I say, unleashing my best Franglais, while vaguely mystified as to why anyone who speaks French even worse than I do would choose this language to address me, and wondering where on earth he could be from. “Ça va bien, merci! Comment allez-vous?”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE speaking “French”. I speak “French” at every opportunity, much to the embarrassment of my spawn, and I’ve been very much enjoying speaking drunk “French” in Lebanon.

I find alcohol vastly improves my capacity with foreign languages, though, of course, my interlocutors may differ. My drunk “Chinese” held up for an entire conversation with a Japanese guy in a bar in Shanghai, and, with the aid of a dictionary, I have discussed philosophical concepts in drunk “Indonesian”.

Anywise, my capacity with the French language was best summed up by a Moroccan, 20 years or so ago, who laughed at some incoherent, impoverished, ungrammatical bon mot of mine and then said, “You know, you’d really be quite funny if you could speak French…”

“I am an teacher of French at a French high school meeleetairy,” says my new friend, who I am beginning to realise may not be the owner of the kids at all. Bugger.

I am now standing up, in the bikini top I bought in Beirut. That is, while not an atypical amount of flesh for a foreign woman on this beach, still a hell of a lot of exposed flesh given the water is only waist-high and we are, after all, in Egypt.

Wait?! WHAT?!

“Where did you learn French?” I ask, in French.

“No, no,” he says. “I am an TEACHER of French, at a meeleetairy high school.”

“Yes,” I say. I mean, I knew the Egyptian education system was blasted, and teachers earn pennies, but this man does not appear poor. “I know! Where did you study French?”

“I have stoodehed in the Rouen. And I have veeseeted the Paris,” he says. “Have you ever veeseeted the Paris, madame?”

Holy shit! I’m in a GCSE French conversation exam circa 1990, except wearing only a bikini top and shorts. I am LIVING an anxiety dream.

“Yes,” I say. “Several times. Maybe four or five? I can’t remember how many times. I need to think…”

What I am thinking about is what excuse I can use to extract myself from this conversation. I could go for a swim, but in waist-high water it’s kind of pointless and anyway, I’ll probably have to continue our French conversation while swimming with my new friend.

“I am here inspecting the teaching of French in high schools,” he says. “With my colleague.”

He’s moving in.

Oh god.

He’s going to touch my arm.

“Are you married?” he asks, looking at my left hand (and, yet again, I perceive the bitter, bitter irony that, after the fake wedding ring I donned for my last sustained trip in this neck of the woods was so blithely disbelieved, now every man I meet is looking for the ring and finding it wanting).

“No,” I say. “Not any more. But I have a boyfriend.”

“What’s his name?”

He touches my arm.

The only name that springs to mind is Z’s dad’s. I spit it out, hope Z can’t hear me, and look around for someone to extract me from this conversation.

My son is happily playing ball with the little kids. Bugger.

I was soooo looking forward to a beer at the beach bar, as well.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

“You speak the French extremely well,” he says. “You are verrrry pretty and verrrry polite.”

I try to steer the topic into safer, umm, waters. “The two little boys,” I say. “Are they your sons?”

“No, no,” he says. “They are enemy.”

“WHAT?” I say.

“ENEMY,” he says.

“Enemy?” I repeat weakly.

“Yes, they are of UNE AMIE,” he says.

Oh, I think. Well, at least he has a female friend. Somewhere.

Where?

“How old are they?” I ask.

“BOY!” he yells in Arabic. “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

“Eight,” replies the first kid, in Arabic.

“He is eight,” he tells me, in French.

“BOY!” he bellows in Arabic. “HOW OLD’S THE OTHER BOY?”

“Five,” the answer comes back. They’re definitely Bedouin, cos the five-year-old looks seven, and I reckon the eight-year-old is nine.

“The other is five,” he says.

“Oh,” I say, finding this interaction mildly amusing. “What are their names?”

Now, I should say that my new friend is not ungentlemanly (apart from the arm touch), just extremely persistent, but it is quite clear that solo, mother and son, or mother and group of kids activities are now firmly off the agenda for the evening.

I wander over and throw the ball with the kids.

He joins in.

Of course he bloody does.

They’re his friend’s kids, right?

F*ck OFF, I think. You don’t even KNOW these kids.

I want to get out of here before he starts befriending my son.

I crouch down to a shoulder and cleavage concealing depth, and half-wade, half-swim over to Z. “We need to leave,” I mutter.

“Why?” he says.

“That guy’s hitting on me,” I say. “I KNEW I shouldn’t have worn a bikini.”

“Oh,” he says. “Alright, then.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I just can’t shake him.”

“That’s alright,” Z says. My new friend is of an age and, let’s be honest, size that does not, I think, suit Z’s mental ideal of a suitor for his mother.

“I’m sorry,” I lie in Franglais. “We have to go! Our driver is waiting for us, and we are meeting friends.”

We are midway through this hasty exit and our driver is coming to meet us when Z’s face collapses into utter trauma.

“Mum!” he says. “You DO have my sandals, don’t you?”