How to be an Old Wife, Egypt-Style

I never cry wolf. I never swim within an hour after eating. I feed my cold and starve my fever and fear coffee is the culprit behind my short stature. I eat carrots to improve my eyesight and I refrain from the consumption of chocolate to ward off pimples. Overall, I have gained an extensive library of “old wives” knowledge needed to survive on American soil.

But I’m not in America anymore, am I…

While sitting in an emergency procedure and CPR training in Egypt, the director asked a group of Egyptian students, “What should you do with a second degree burn?” It was then the argument started. “Pour lemon juice on it!” “No! It’s salt. Put salt on it.” “Honey. Honey will keep out infection.” Personally, I’d try any of these things before willingly admitting myself in to an Egyptian hospital, and I wondered what other “Egyptian Old Wives Tales” were out there.

When I was a child my siblings, cousins, and I got “swimmers itch”, or “cercarial dermatitis” to the smart people, “duck itch” to those in New Jersey, or perhaps “hoi con” if you’re a rice paddy farmer in Asia. Either way, swimmers itch is a disgusting, itchy rash caused by a larval parasite penetrating through the skin. According to my very scholarly grandmothers, their mothers, and their mothers’ mothers’ mothers, the solution to the itch problem is a scientific concoction of baking soda and water. So, for several days we plastered ourselves in this potion and then sat on the dock like little clay pots until we dried. Did it work? Of course, the scientific solution to the itch is not to scratch it until it goes away. When you’re covered in a thick dried paste, it’s awfully hard to scratch.
In Egypt there is no cure for the problem of swimmers itch. While asking various native Egyptians about a similar possible problem, I was told that if someone actually decided to swim in the polluted Nile River and extracted larval parasite, then they probably already have mental problems far more serious than a little rash. However, according to an Egyptian old wives’ tale, if your right hand is itching it is a sign that money will soon be coming your way. You should also continuously scratch this hand with a gold coin to increase your monetary luck. On the flip side, if your left hand is itching, you will lose money or have unexpected bills. Don’t scratch this hand; the money will disappear faster.

In Egyptian, your throat will itch if someone is speaking about you behind your back, while in the US your ears would ring. Sometimes when sitting in a room of Arabic speakers with condescending eyes, my ears ring and my throat itches and the paranoia sets in. What are they saying about me!? While climbing Mt. Sinai I actually overheard a group of American girls dissing me, the “young married girl.” We were climbing in the pitch blackness of the night in order to avoid the desert heat and reach the top by sunrise, and I went unnoticed as we trekked upwards in the darkness. “Girls that get married and go to Egypt alone aren’t monogamous. Girls that get married that young are really just looking for someone to take care of them.” It was then my right fist started itching and not because I was getting money anytime soon.

While getting your hair removed in Egypt, you can determine how smitten your husband is if the pot of sugar wax crackles. Likewise, if you prefer to have your eyebrows threaded and the thread breaks your husband loves you as well. Then you can cross the Atlantic and pull the pedals off a flower while chanting, “He loves me. He loves me not” to see if the wax pot was calling the kettle black. My wax crackles, thread breaks, and my flowers always says “he loves me,” so take that Mt. Sinai bitches.

There are so many old wives tales from Egypt and America that it is a wonder how an American living in Egypt can survive without breaking a mirror or getting the evil eye. So here I sit, watching out for black cats, refraining from singing in the bathroom or before breakfast, and throwing salt over my shoulder to ward off evil and make me a better cook! The Egyptians always say, “seek knowledge, even if you have to go to China,” but who needs China when you can go to Egypt!