Life in the Big City

I knew there would be culture shock and yet again, I wasn't really planning to give it much more than a passing glance. I figured, I wasn't really changing cultures, at least I was going from one country in the Middle East to another country in the same region; barely two hours away by plane. So how hard could it be, anyway?

I was about to find out.

I grew up my whole life, more than 40 years, on campuses. I lived, worked, and worshipped on a space of land you could easily walk in 20 minutes. My world was small—too small—as I felt it at times, but this was all I knew. I didn't realize the ease with which I was living as housing was a given, my work commute was often 10 minutes or less, and utilities and maintenance were part of the benefits. 

Suddenly I found myself standing in an empty and rather disheveled looking apartment with lumpy linoleum floors listening to a real estate agent bemusedly answer our question about the missing light bulbs in the house. 

It's your first apartment rental, right? It's common for apartments not to have light fixtures. You install them yourselves and then, when you leave, you take them with you.

What an odd thought. Why anyone would want to clamber up to the ceiling and take down the light fixtures made no sense to me. Unless, of course, their light fixtures were one of the many status symbols I had noticed dominated society here. Thankfully I had a very tall husband whose penchant for fixing things made my life much easier and saved a bit of money too. 

The first apartment we'd seen was referred to us by someone who knew a real estate agent. The apartment was so small, you could sneeze and you would have seen all the rooms. It felt too claustrophobic and, even though it was new and within our budget, I said no. Where would we store our 11 suitcases, let alone all the stuff that we had packed in them? 

The next time we ventured out, we saw two different apartments. The first one was nice but there was mold in the bathroom. The second one we really liked and asked the real estate agent to contact the owner. It was furnished, within our budget, and in a nice area of town. There was no mold and the living room and bedroom were bright and filled with light. A week later, the real estate agent still hadn't gotten back to us and we realized we probably had lost that one. 

Then came the big Seven-Apartments-Day. Armed with Google Maps and a spare battery pack that we traded between our phones to keep them going through the day, we trekked all over several different areas, riding the metro, bus, and walking up to 20 minutes each time to see the different places. At the last stop of the day, the sixth apartment, the real estate agent suggested we look at a slightly bigger place he also had available. 

The building was old, but there was no mold smell in the stairway or in the apartment itself. Three of the four rooms were oddly shaped in the form of trapezoids or quadrilaterals at an acute angle. The bathroom was black, which I hated, and the whole apartment felt like a train compartment. But my husband loved it and there was no mold, which by now seemed to be my only requirement. 

We went back to see it the next day in the daylight and decided it would do. I eyed the crumbling upper balcony dubiously, questioning if was a foreboding of whether the building would hold up in an earthquake. My husband reassured me it would. After walking around the surrounding area one more time, we chorused to each other that we loved it. 

After all, we won't be in the apartment much, anyhow, I reasoned. I was starting to figure out this big city routine and realizing it was going to take up much of my day. Even if we would end up living 45 minutes closer to the school than we were now, if I took a teaching job, that would eat into my time too. We would be out most of the day and only come back to sleep, do laundry, and eat something quick. 

A delicious falafel meal and a metro change later, we were sitting on prized seats on the M4 line heading back to our temporary apartment. We hurried home through the drizzling rain, thankful it wasn't raining harder as I hadn't brought a rain jacket. There was laundry waiting to be done, the room looked like a tornado had exploded, and I needed to catch up on vacuuming, homework, and cooking. If we heard back from the real estate agent, we would need to set up the utilities, sign the rental contract, clean the apartment, and start looking for appliances and furniture. 

Life in the big city. Just one of the many life-shocks I would be encountering.