And Moses Said...

Let me preface this by stating that I am supposed to be in Alexandria. There was a train that had my theoretical ticket, and a theoretical seat, where theoretically I should have been sitting drink my theoretical drink and reading a theoretical book. But that didn’t happen. Mainly because I was supposed to go with my roommate who was going to come with me because this girl lives in Alexandria but she goes to school at AUC and she told me to come visit sometime because she goes up there for the weekends a lot. But noooo… He had a book report to write, so we didn’t leave.

As it turns out, that was a really good move. See, one of my roommate’s parents are in town so they are out on a Nile Cruise, and so if we had left there would have been no one in the apartment to stop the flood. Yup, thats right, the flood. See, because there are so many bad pipes in Cairo, there is a great invention in many of the bathrooms of a drain. The idea goes as follows: pipes will clog, and water will get everywhere, and therefore every bathroom should have a “master drain” that has an opening somewhere in the bathroom floor so that if anything ever clogs the water has a place to drain, instead of going all over your apartment. Quite a stellar idea which has come in damn handy when the door to the washing machine popped open and water flooded everywhere.

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I walked into the bathroom to find a mini-lake sitting in the bathroom. I thought to myself “this isn’t good”. However, there is a precursor to this story, because a few days ago, the same thing had happened. The lake was a tiny puddle, and at the time I thought nothing of it. Without my glasses on early in the morning I dismissed it as nothing more than water that dripped off my roommate after he got out of the shower. Well, I got a text from Andrew later that day asking if the bathroom was flooded when I got up. I found this strange, but I said not really. He said that it just sort of magically went away after a bit. So this was good news. I thought perhaps it was our continually troublesome toilet. Maybe the tank that held the clean water didn’t stop filling and started flowing everywhere. Thanks random internet for the pic of drains in Egypt (this one isn't flooded).

So back to the story story thingy. I had to piss, so I got up and went into the bathroom. Naturally I was still groggy, and not fully with it, but was surprised to find my foot in about 3 inches of water. The only good news is that our bathroom isn’t quiet level, so the water was mainly only covering about half the bathroom.

Well, I turned off the water to the sink and the toilet. Or I tried. The problem is that our sink leaks 100% of the time, all day, everyday. The knobs underneith to turn the water off are stripped on the cold water, and doesn’t shut all the way on the hot water pipe, so there is no stopping the flow of water. Well, I didn’t think anything of it because I thought it was the toilet. There was no sign of water leakage from the sink, so it couldn’t be from there. I decided the best course of action was to start to scoop the water off the floor and then get a fan to dry off the floor. So I got a pot lid and started scooping into the shower. Well, after a good 20 minutes I realized that the water level wasn’t decreasing. This was strange. So then I decided to check that drain that was “supposed” to make the water go away. It obviously was clogged (otherwise the water would have drained). And thats when it clicked -- all the water lines in the bathroom go to a central pipe (perhaps except for the toilet)! I did a little test, and sure enough, when I dumped a bunch of water in the bathtub, I could see the ripples of water come up OUT of the drainage ditch. This is a bad thing. I didn’t think much of it, perhaps it would drain by itself like it did with Andrew. The bowab was no where to be found (it was Friday morning, when everyone is at prayer, Friday is the holy day) so I though I’d go get some milk from the one store that was open and just wait until I could get my hands on a plumber.

I get back maybe 15 minutes later, and I see there is a problem. The water had started spreading. It was clearly advancing up towards the carpet of the hallway. In fact, it was only about 6 inches away, and getting closer. Something had to be done. The good news is now with the exasterbaited problem, I could detect the cause. There was a good 2 inches of water ABOVE the shower drain, and this was the clue I needed. The way the piping system worked under the tile floor came to my brain in diagram form. The only question was… where was it draining? Or supposed to be draining? In retrospect, its quite obvious that there was only a partial clog, so it clogged and filled up a little, but then that morning when I went out to get milk it entirely clogged, and the never ending flow of water from the sink came out of the drainage pipe into the bathroom. Regardless, I didn’t put that piece of the puzzle together until later. I got our big plastic garbage can out of the kitchen, woke up my roommate, handed him the pot lid, and told him to get scooping. The water was beginning to move into the carpet, not good.

I then followed the pipes. There is an interesting central shaft that is just open without a roof. It is there that the vents for the gas appliances and the water pipes run. You can get into this space by crawling through a window. Luckily we live on the 1st floor, so getting to our pipe was relatively easy. It was quite obvious there was a problem because water was seeping everywhere in this little space. Just as I was about to go investigate further, a guy came up, and I said I needed help, so we went into the bathroom, and started to use a mop to try and plunge the main drain in our bathroom. After some searching, we managed to find a plunger under the kitchen sink. After that there was progress. The clog partially dissipated, and the threat of apartment flooding was averted. It wasn’t draining great though, so it required someone to wade out to where our master pipe came out on the other side of the bathroom wall in the small space for all the apartment pipes. The pipe has an “oh shit” opening, basically so that if there is a clog downhole, you can plunge something, and theoretically the water has a place to drain out of (which it was partially draining). After some motivated plunging work, the clog was gone. The man asked for money. At the time I thought he was the bowab, who we pay to handle this kind of stuff, so I didn’t pay him much, but in retrospect, I think he might not have been, which means I was a real mean bastard for being a cheep ass, so I’m sure. Feel a little bad about that. Oh well.

Later I had to mop the floor to get the “dirty” water from a backed up drain off our floor. The smell wasn’t great, but after some good mopping, and the use of a fan for a few hours to evaporate the rest of the water, I think the bathroom is probably cleaner than it was prior to the incident.

And that my friends is why going to Alexandria would have been really really really really really really really really bad. Whew. Dodged a bullet.