Dirty Nails

I have short finger nails, for piano it became a habit, but here in Cairo I have had to make cutting my nails a daily activity. Why? Having dirt under your nails seems to be form of citizenship here in Cairo, and even if you are germaphobe-like most foreigners petrified of eating a bad falafel or falling in the Nile-you will find dirt underneath those nails within two hours of washing your hands. What have I been doing?? I ask myself, trying to remember if I stopped to dig a few holes in the dirt on the way to the bank, because my nails seem to suggest that new hobby. It takes no more than a trip to the bank, a trip to the store, or a ride in a taxi for the insidious dirt to sneak up those small crevasses and snuggle in for the ride. The culprit, I believe, is the dirty money. Literally, dirty money. Not money from a drug deal or a laundering scheme, but just straight up money with at least one centimeter of dirt coating the paper. Is that Fifty pounds? I don't know, looks like a twenty to me....Twenty pounds or twenty piaster??? The piaster is the equivalent of a cent, except it is much, much more useless. First of all, they are in the form of bills, so it is quite easy to mistake the 50 pound note (lots of money) with the 50 piaster note (barely considered money) Maybe at the mint the bills were separate colors, vibrantly different, but after a few shifts in the streets of Cairo, you are lucky if you can distinguish between the now muddled colors and script. You just can't escape the dirt, the way you can't escape the noise, the traffic, the sounds the smells and the life of Cairo. And as much as I enjoy my shower at the end of the day, I am glad that I can't fully escape the vitality of this city. I guess this just proves that you can't get the real experience without getting a little dirty yourself. But don't worry, this hallmark moment won't keep me from washing my hands like I am scrubbing in for surgery every chance I get.