time for a/c

Speaking of frightening, it’s already feeling like a brutal Cairo summer is headed our way. It’s pretty oppressive tonight, on May 19.

I grew up in a place where May meant beautiful springtime. But early in my second semester in Cairo, during my second Arabic class, we had an exercise where we had to classify the months by their seasons. I classed May under spring, and was mocked by the Arabic teacher for doing so. I was a bit taken aback, and had no idea what she was talking about. But once May 2001 arrived, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

The months in Cairo usually go roughly as follows:

January-February are a sort of paradise. The weather is crisp and cool, the pollution is lower than usual, and it feels great to be alive. (The last two Februarys have been cold, but I hope that was a brief anomaly in the climate.)

March is the beginning of the sandstorm season, which carries on into April.

Then the summer begins in May, extending into early September. During July/August it’s hard to walk far without carrying a bottle of water, and one usually goes through 3 shirts in a day.

October/November are pleasant, and December often feels to me like the coldest month. I tried to make it through my first Cairo winter without even a jacket, but shortly after Christmas that became impossible.

Furthermore, since the winters aren’t all that bad, heating is usually quite poor in public buildings. It’s simply not worth the investment. For this reason we were told to expect the winters to be harder to deal with in Egypt than the summers. And that is arguably true, though perhaps a bit of an exaggeration.

If I were independently wealthy and could move around the globe throughout the year as I pleased, I might well choose Egypt as my annual January-February home. That’s when visits are probably most advisable.

And it barely ever rains. Some Cairenes contradict me whenever I say that, but I think they’re simply wrong. For all practical purposes, it never really rains. Once in awhile a sudden drizzle will catch me in the open, but rarely does it last for more than 15 minutes.