What is the meaning of the word 'random'?

Its approximately 2:30 in the morning. Its freezing. I have just taken a joyride through Cairo with my friend A and his friend. We are now ascending the stairs to said friend's house. I turn to A and say, "do you know the word random?"
"What is the meaning of the word random?" he asks
Alissa chimes in, "like without plan."
"No organization, everything is just crazy. My life is very random."
He kinda laughs nervously...(as he should have given the fact we were about to be force fed date desserts and basically held hostage in a suburban apartment belonging to a sketchy police officer armed with a fishing knife, far from home in the middle of the night).

So in case you can't tell from my blogs so far, life in Cairo, particularly my life in Cairo, is freakin RANDOM. For instance, just this minute, I found out that probably the most famous contemporary Egyptian author (wrote The Yacoubian Building, Chicago) is running a dentist office with a window directly across from our window. His office staff has seen me and my roommate doing Bollywood Burn exercise videos half naked. We have wondered about him keeping his office hours around 1 AM.

This randomness of my life in Cairo to the point of irony has come out more during this long Aeed weekend since I am free from any kind of my regular routine, and holidays are always just weird.

So Friday night I headed to Old Islamic Cairo (somewhat near our apartment) with my roommate to the engagement party of the sister of our first friend from our second time in Cairo (the driver who picked us up at the airport). So we drive around these crazy alleyways, observing sheep tied to the roof of a taxi, my roommate pretty much so sick she's dead. We end up sitting in some chairs belonging to a coffee shop against the boundary wall of the Ibn Tulun mosque (one of the oldest mosques in Cairo) and wait for random 13ish year old cousin of our friend to come fetch us. We end up going up to their house (our friend is actually at the coiffeur) and after seeing some sort of pornographic materials on TV with the women and children and one man, we are escorted into a bedroom to eat (while they are all fasting). We then make our way to the party hall, where we proceed to wait a couple hours, killing our time trying to name Egyptian pop singers, talking to the surprisingly very respectful little boys of the family about school and the random pictures of this old fat man plastered on all the walls, while Alissa looks the color of leben sukhen (hot milk) and is staring at a tile on the floor. The beautiful bride finally gets there amongst much ululation, then we are ushered out to see our friend, he realizes Alissa's sick, and takes us down the winding road past the ancient mosque to get a cab. Random.

Saturday morning I spent seeing the Nilometer (an ancient roman Nile level measurer) and laying on a patch of grass with my friend F and her sister. I somehow sort of half-successfully explained 9-11 and the consequent American change in opinion towards Arabs in Arabic to someone who had never heard of it. I also taught two Egyptian women how to duck-call with pieces of grass, that finding a four-leaf clover was lucky, what a roly-poly was, and how to play "down by the banks." They taught me the Egyptian version of "down by the banks" and heads up seven up, and that I should NEVER EVER EVER touch a roly-poly or ANY kind of insect.

After this, I head to church in Maadi, where I watch the lighting of the advent calendar and sing some Christmasy songs, and discuss the angel tree. Then we head to our family in Maasara. We end up watching Beauty and the Beast dubbed over in Arabic, then this weird Egyptian soap opera set in southern California with some sort of prison escape plot. We learn that part of our Egyptian family is leaving for America on Wednesday. WEDNESDAY!

My friend M calls because he NEEDS to talk to me. I rush home in the morning to meet him, and hear his story of woe. His ex-fiance called him (they haven't talked in months) and told him that she was on her lesser pilgrimage to Mecca and she prayed for him the whole time, and she dreamed about him and she knows they will always love each other but she now wears Niqab (the thing that covers everything but the eyes) and wants to be with God all the time, so she knows they can't be together. He wants to tell her everything, all the suffering I've seen him go through these last months being depressed without her, but doesn't know if he should, and he can't ever be with a woman wearing Niq'ab, even if she is the best in the world. He also informs me that tonight is "Hash Feast."

Then back to Maasara to translate between our Egyptian family and my roommate's family where we are urged to eat more and more chicken and sweet potatoes with sugar. Among the constant mentionings of Mama Egyptian and Mama American and Baba Egyptian and Baba American all being together, our translation skills were not that necessary.

Then Alissa and I head downtown to meet my friend A who appears to not actually be coming. So we do a little shopping, make some friends with some sweet girls in the shops, get creeped out by the men in the shops, and head to the cafe where we had tea the first week we were in Cairo and have gone back to ever since. There is a sense of coming full circle as she orders Sahlab (a traditional winter drink involving coconut) and I get warm tea with milk. Its cold. We're about to leave, A finally comes, and the joy ride around Cairo begins, Madonna and the Eagles on the stereo. This culminates in the weird parking lot and suburban apartment as well as a strange car chase involving mistaken identity, then an excuse about picking a mother up from the airport at 3:30 AM (at which time Cairo is still completely awake) which allowed us to escape to a taxi.

I get home and its time for morning prayer. Today is Aeed al-Adha. The slaughter day. This means at sunrise there is a huge community prayer. My roommate, her family, and I, head to a mosque far from our house, fully Islamically veiled, although clearly not convincing anyone that we're Egyptian. We end up early, so we go into a donut shop! Haha. We then situate ourselves multiple times around the mosque of Mustafa Mahmoud. Thousands and thousands of people flood the street in greater and greater numbers as the sky pinkens and lightens. Balloons and plastic to kneel on are the sales items of the day. After an hour of call to prayer, one cycle through the stations of prayer with a collective murmur of Allahu Akbar is simultaneously made by thousands at this mosque alone (on this day gender separation is too difficult, so families can all stay together). And then its over, a collective shout of celebration is issued, and the feast has begun! Candies fly in the air, we flee to a side street and catch a taxi.

Ten minutes later I'm in a 5 star resort hotel with my friend's parents, munching on the open buffet, being offered coffee or tea from a young man named Mohamed in a black vest and name tag. I'm looking out the panoramic windows over the Nile, and discussing social research and non-profit organizations, slipping into the comfort of what feels like a past life in another world.

Twenty minutes after this meal I'm watching the clean up of the blood in front of a garage on our street following the animal sacrifice. Twenty minutes after this, I'm warm in my bed contemplating what meaning I can take from the utter lack of continuity that is my life.