Haute Couture and The Head Spy

Sailing on the Nile is relaxing, but it takes a bit of getting used to after the hectic pace of the previous days. There’s a gym on board which I bypass categorically. I get enough exercise going up and down the stairs, and besides, having little old me on a treadmill, with the crutches, is just another embarrassing situation waiting to happen. 

There’s a jewellery and gift shop right across from the gym, and being situated on the third deck right by the stairs, it’s in a prime location for an obligatory rest period during my globetrotting up and down said stairs. Even without this totally logical and reasonable pretext to stop by the boutique and ogle the jewellery, I find it impossible to simply crutch on by and not go in. 

That’s why I’m convinced there’s a tractor beam emanating from the store. Every time I pass by, the crutches are possessed by an unknown force, and I get pulled in like a wobbly caboose on bumpy rails. After the umpteenth visit, I exit the shop with a dent in my credit card and a gorgeous necklace around my neck. I’ll say this in its defence: that tractor beam has good taste. 

I also come out of the store with a gallabiyya, a long, fancy robe with ornate embroidery in intricate designs. A special dinner and reception is planned for this evening and guests are invited to dress up in this traditional Egyptian garb. Since I intend to fully participate in the dressing up bit, I hurry back to my suite to try on my new outfit and make sure that I’ll be presentable. 

Modeling the gallabiyya in front of my cabin’s mirror, I’m miles away from being presentable. Well, maybe not miles, more like half a foot away. It turns out that the gallabiyya is a bit too long. Oh, surprise of surprises! Since I’m five feet two inches tall, this is not a rare occurrence. The garment extends past my feet by a good six inches. Good for a baptismal dress, not good for ambulating without tripping and landing face first in the hummus, cast or no cast. What’s more, the sleeves are also way too long. My hands have disappeared, and with the crutches attached to my arms, it looks as if I’ve got stilts for arms. From a side view, I have the allure of an overgrown R2D2.

To remedy the problem, I rummage through my luggage in search of my little sewing kit which lives in the same pouch that is home to the glue stick of ill repute. Opening the pouch, I see the little plastic runt of a tube, lying innocently at the bottom. Now is my chance to put the stick to good use. Instead of hemming my robe, I could glue the hem in place. There’s an idea!

A little angel me appears on my right shoulder, fully attired with white robe, wings, and shiny halo. “Don’t do it”, she whispers in my ear. “Any job worth doing is worth doing well.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah”, retorts the little devil me, sitting on my left shoulder and poking me in the cheek with her pitchfork. “Go for the stick. You need fast and easy”, she goads me on. “Glue the hem! It’ll be done lickety-split.”

“If the Almighty had intended for us to assemble our clothes with glue”, Angel Me chimes in, “He wouldn’t have loaded all those haystacks with needles. And Mr. Singer would have been a barber, instead of patenting his sewing machine.” 

“Don’t listen to that haloed feather duster. She’s not making any sense.” Forked tail a-twitching, Devil Me continues along a different avenue, “Don’t you want to take your revenge on that stupid glue stick? It attacked you, don’t forget. Make that little stick pay. Make it work for you for a change. Make it work hard.” 

Devil Me has a point. Three points, if you count both horns. I reach for the glue stick.

“Think of your mother who spent hours teaching you to sew”, Angel Me says, using the voice of reason. “How sad would she be to know you’ve thrown all her hard work away?”

Aaarrrgh! Angel Me’s played the mother card.  

I extract the little box of threads from the pouch, leaving the glue stick untouched. Devil Me disappears in a huff. Angel Me smiles and bats her wings in approval. I sneeze: I’m allergic to feathers. 

The good thing about travel sewing kits is that they provide thread in assorted colours. The bad thing about them is that they only provide enough thread of each colour to sew on a few buttons, clearly not enough for the extensive alterations needed here. 

Starting with the blue thread—the gallabiyya is blue and gold—I start hemming. I’m soon out of blue thread. I move on to the black, then green, and then brown thread. The colours are dark enough to blend in somewhat with the blue, so that’s good, but I’m still not finished. So far, I’ve managed to do the sleeves and part of the hem. I’ve got yellow, red, pink, and white thread left. That’s definitely going to clash. Plus, what if I do end up needing thread for an actual button down the road? I decide to save the thread and use up the safety pins—of which I have lots—for the remainder of the hem. Angel Me can’t chastise me for using those!

Looking at the metal-enhanced finished product, I can say with certainty that my last name is not Dior, but with the dim lighting in the lounge and the fact that I’ll be sitting for most of the evening, nobody will notice this grave insult to the world of Haute Couture.

Along with the gallabiyya, the shop keeper also talked me into buying a fancy headscarf, but after twenty minutes of fiddling with the thing, I give up. I must be lacking the gene responsible for proper headscarf positioning. No matter how I arrange it around my head, I end up looking like the unfortunate recipient of a lobotomy, or a lunatic pirate, at best. I forego wearing the scarf altogether. 

Leaving my cabin, all geared up for dinner, I run into the head spy. Coincidence? I think not. I have to admit that at this particular moment, he doesn’t look much like a secret agent. I’ve never seen such a glaring conflict of cultures as with this gentleman. His head is unadorned except for standard issue black-rimmed sunglasses. He’s dressed in a white gallabiyya which ends at his knees. This is where Egypt stops and Britain resumes. Below the hem of his robe, a pair of colourful Argyle socks makes a jubilant appearance before vanishing into shiny black Oxfords. 

“Going down to the dining room?” he enquires in a nonchalant manner. He’s trying to hide it, but I’m sure he already knows my every move for the next fortnight.

“Yes, I sure am. I need to load up on milk and other dairy products,” I lie. I’m really going to load up on hummus and a glass of wine, but I’m not going to tell him that. My stratagem—devised just this instant—is to deliberately feed the Brits false information. That’ll put a kink in their intelligence gathering. When the kink gets big enough, the whole network should self-destruct quite nicely. 

“Personally, I think a glass of wine and some appetizers would do you more good,” he says, with a smile. “You have to enjoy yourself somehow.”

Man, they’re good! They’re on to me already. I need to adjust the stratagem.

Halfway down the stairs, mister-have-some-wine-and-I-know-what-you’re-up-to-secret-agent-head-spy stops and tilts his head as if trying to hear something. Since he’s not wearing earphones or listening devices or any sort—unless he’s got a receiver/transmitter brain implant—I assume it’s just a funky nervous tic. 

“There’s a faint metallic clicking sound,” he says. “Do you hear it?”

I shake my head in the negative. I do hear it and I know what it is, but I’m keeping mum. My revised stratagem is to not divulge any information whatsoever. Without a shred of tangible intelligence to work with, the network should dry up quite nicely. Besides, I see no need to broadcast to all of Britain that I’ve added an auditory accessory to my attire by hemming half of my robe with safety pins which are now pinging loudly against the metal parts on my cast every time I move. 

Head Spy turns toward me and exclaims, “It’s you, madam! You’re pinging.”

“Oh, there must be something loose with one of the crutches,” I reply, startled that he’s figured it out so quickly. “I’ll have to get someone to look at that.” 

He chuckles and adds, “For a minute, I thought you were transmitting state secrets via Morse code.”

It’s my turn to chuckle. I covertly look left and right then, using a most enigmatic tone of voice, I whisper, “You never know . . .” Stratagem revision number two: let them think I’m one of them. That may be just enough to confuse them and throw them off balance. The network should then short-circuit quite nicely.

We arrive at the dining room. With a “have a good evening”, I leave Head Spy to join his group, get debriefed, and unknowingly initiate the demise of the network. Satisfied that I’ve taken care of the MI6-of-the-Nile, I make my way over to my own crowd.