Clowning around the world

I met Demetrius through a website for clowns.
One day BumpANose.Net told me it was Demetrius’s birthday and that he lived in Alexandria, Egypt. I sent him greetings and told him I had clowned in Cairo four months earlier.
Demetrius replied that he was sorry to have missed me and I told him to cheer up—I would return to Egypt the following year. So when my travels took me back to Cairo I bought a train ticket to Alexandria.
I was visiting a qualified tour guide. He boards with his parents and they invited me to stay with them.
Since the ‘Arab Spring’ revolution in Egypt, there are few tourists. Demetrius has had about one day of guiding to do every six months, so he works at night in a bakery. He met me at the station with a friend who drove us to the apartment block where they live.
I was given Demetrius’s bedroom. After a few days I realised that while I had his bed he was sleeping on the floor in the lounge.
Demetrius’s family are ethnically Greek and religiously Coptic (Egyptian Christian) which puts them in a small portion of the Egyptian population. His parents apologised to me for their simple food—their church was having a fast for fifteen days in honour of a saint. The fast meant no meat, fish, eggs or dairy products—but as a guest I was sometimes served cheese and fish. (I’ve now learnt the Copts fast for over 200 days each year.)
The main food at two or three meals a day was ‘fuul’; stewed fava beans mashed with herbs, spices and oil. In Demetrius’s house it was always served cold.
Demetrius introduced me to five other clowns and I did daytime workshops with them—practicing acrobatics, mime and juggling, and within a week we put together a half hour show to perform in a Boys Home and a Sunday School.
One evening Demetrius’s father, Mina, took me to a Coptic church that was bombed at a New Year’s Eve service 19 months before. In a glass cabinet were blood stained tiles and photos to remember the 27 people who died that night. “No one’s been arrested for the bombing,” Mina told me, “And a mosque has been built across the street. Its loudspeakers make much noise in the church.” The Copts feel oppressed.
On my last day the clowns took me out for lunch at a rooftop cafe. “Would you like a sandwich?” I was asked. “What would you like in it?”
In protest at the bland food I’d had every day, I exclaimed, “A fuul sandwich!” My protest was wasted—I was brought a fuul sandwich, however it was hot and tastier than I’d been fed at home!