I have heard that when there is a moment of silence among a group of people, it's most likely twenty minutes before the hour or twenty minutes after the hour. Just notice, and you’ll see it’s true. It hasn’t been too quiet around my house lately as six of my husband’s relatives have arrived from Egypt, and four of them are teenagers. Including my two children, we now have six loud teens in the house, and five of them are boys. The volume is comparable to a small jet taking off at the Minneapolis Airport. Egyptians often sound like they are yelling at each other when they are just talking. I have seen my husband’s family haggle for oranges in the markets with as much passion as we might show on the first day of a sale at Best Buy or a Krispy Kreme store opening!
  
I now understand that expression my parents used to say to us kids, “You are eating us out of house and home.” The large bowls of cereal before bedtime and the amount of bread, meat, chips, fruit, veggies, and snacks that can be consumed at one sitting is amazing. Two packages of hot dogs and buns might be just a little morsel to “tide them over”!

Constant laughter, singing, and Arabic chatter surround me. Some of the kids are better at speaking English than others, but they all understand it fairly well. They love to joke with each other in their native tongue. Although I studied Arabic for a year a while back, I am content these days if I can catch the main subject. People from all over the Middle East always comment on how funny Egyptians are, and I think they’re right.

Sharing meals together with a crowd feels familiar since I grew up in a family of ten. At our first dinner, my nephew said, “I like this system you have here of talking while eating, it’s fun. We don’t do that at home.” Maybe that’s why he’s skinny and I’m not. He concentrates on eating to satisfy hunger, and we approach it as a social occasion. When my sister-in-law and I cook together, our meals are mélange of Egyptian/American entrées filled with fruits and vegetables, set upon colorful Egyptian tablecloths.

The males in the family quickly discovered a common theme they like to laugh about. It seems that the subject of passing wind is a universal delight. This mysterious side effect of our bodies fascinates teenage boys in particular. I sat quietly, feeling happy that I rarely need to worry about gas noises thanks to my ostomy pouch. If gas does occur, it’s so discreet, I never feel embarrassed.

One night after dinner, the flatulence subject wound itself into the Arabic/English conversation again. Each accused the other of contributing the most natural gases on the earth. Just when they had settled down from a long tirade of Arabic that I had managed to follow, I quietly told them very seriously that no one was more professional at gas action than their Uncle Bahgat, my husband. This threw them into hysterics, and they hooted loudly at the thought of their uncle as their competition.

Bahgat, true to his reputation, displayed his prowess with a loud gift. Even I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. Just then we took a collective sigh, and there was a flash of quiet. In that exact moment, gas escaped from me in an amazing unplanned trumpet of sounds surprising all of us, especially me. My nephews and Bahgat fell off their chairs, my neck hurt from the hilarity and tears flowed from all of us. Just then, I glanced at the clock. What do you know? It was twenty past.