Picture it. Saturday, late afternoon, Washington DC. Having spent a frustrating ten minutes suggesting to Hanan that you probably couldn’t just courier a box set of I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen to President Obama, I found myself in the back of a cab with Hanan, and an A4 envelope containing our movies. The driver asked us where we’d like to go.
‘The White House,’ Hanan informed him. ‘Just to the entrance. We need to drop off a package.’
The cab driver regarded her in the mirror as if she had two heads. ‘Lady, you can’t just drive on up to the White House and say hey, here’s a package.’
‘No?’ asked Hanan, taken aback.
‘They got security and shit! I mean, what if that parcel’s full of anthrax?’
She waved the box set at him. ‘It’s just DVDs. The envelope’s open…’
He whipped around in his seat. ‘And you know what else?’ he cried. ‘You look MIDDLE EASTERN!’
We got out of the cab and into bed, where we opened an email from Aida with the link to our live Tampa radio interview from earlier that day. Well, the interview was only 10 minutes long, but we were both fast asleep by the time it was done. I like to think it was because we were exhausted, not because we were boring. Anyway, here’s the link, in case you feel like listening, just type in the date in the Archive box, and we start about 6 minutes in.http://www.wmnf.org/programs/303
But I digress. Back to this morning, and we headed to the Corcoran Gallery to see a show by photographer Ed Burtynsky, whom we met through our dear friend and Exec Producer on The World Unseen, Katherine Priestley. It was phenomenal, but somewhat less phenomenal was traipsing around the park afterwards in a freezing gale to get a view of The White House. I watched Hanan nervously, half expecting her to whip a box set out of her bag and hurl it at the balcony, but we were much too far away, so she contented herself with stopping random tourists (always ones who spoke absolutely no English) to have them take endless pictures of us. And I contented myself with whining about the cold, until we found a cab.
As we drove past the sights, Hanan looked mistily out of the window.
‘That’s where my office used to be,’ she told me. ‘Overlooking that big white thing.’
‘You mean the Washington Monument? And what do you mean “office”?’
‘I had an office here. For a year and a half. Years ago’
Of course she did. I am married to Hanan, International Woman of Mystery. From Osaka to Shanghai, from Hong Kong to DC, from Paris, France to Waco, Texas -there’s nowhere she hasn’t spent time. I suppose it’s a good thing that after nearly 14 years with her, I’m still finding out new things, but it does make me fear that if, during my ongoing application for Canadian citizenship, they decide to interview us to see if we’re a genuine couple, we would both flunk unceremoniously. I told her this, and she assured me immigration would only ask about our favourite colours.
'What's your favourite colour?' I asked, realising I wasn't sure.
'Red,' Hanan replied without missing a beat.
'RED?' I was astounded. 'You don't wear red clothes, you threw out my only red shirt, there's nothing red in our house and you only wear black. What do you like about red?'
'I like the idea of it,' she said as if that ought to be obvious. I sat back and looked out of the window, pretending I was already being deported.
Luckily we were whisked away to the pre-screening brunch where more Facebook Super Fans (hello Jinnie, Madison, Lauren and more) were waiting. It’s like a secret society now, everywhere we go, women pop up and know everything about us. Jinnie and Lauren took charge of the camera while Hanan and I met her friends, Rania (ex Chief of Staff for the King & Queen of Jordan) and Marwan (ex-Foreign Minister of Jordan and Ex Ambassador to Washington). I was becoming more and more nervous as to the Arab response to the political aspects of the film, but since they’d grown up with Hanan, they only wanted to discuss each detail of her five exes. This entailed talking through the entire film, so I was relieved when it was time for the Q&A and signing. From there it was straight to the airport, and you can guess that the reason for my second blog in two days is that I was trapped inside a sealed metal tube, in mid-air, sitting next to Hanan. I love that woman, but I love it more when we spend two hours laughing so hard we can’t move, and less when she’s cracking the whip. But hey, I’m not cold, so I can’t complain. Sleep is for wimps. Blogs are for champions.