Egyptian Flight: Follow the Crew

How to play: you are the passenger in seat 32A on a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, and everything anybody says to you is in Egyptian. An announcement comes over the cabin speakers, or the attendant stops at your row — and instead of picking a translation, you do the thing: pull the window blind up, fold the tray table away, switch the reading light off, press the call button. The whole cabin is on screen the entire time. What makes this cabin Egyptian rather than any other is that half the counting says شغّل and the everyday says افتح for the same instruction — and both are on this aircraft, because a crew is not all from one place. On top of that افتح does two different jobs: switch the lamp on and open the vent — so the noun after the verb is what carries the answer. Two more things this cabin drills: the vessel, which is not optional — فنجان قهوة a cup, كوباية عصير a glass, زجاجة ماية a bottle, بطانية a blanket — and the polite حضرتك, because the crew address you with it and there is no bare "you" in service talk at all. Three surfaces answer the three kinds of cue: the cabin panel, a seat map of thirty seats (the teens are حداشر and اتناشر, the irregular numbers), and the service trolley at meal time. Get it wrong and the wrong thing happens — reach for the seat belt when you were asked about the overhead locker and the belt really does fasten — then the panel marks what the line asked for, the crew put you right, and the cue comes back around later. There is no failing and no time limit. What the clock remembers is how long the leg took, and the stamps how many you got first time. Five legs make the flight: boarding, the safety demonstration, cruise, the meal service, and landing — and the cabin grows from four things you can touch to eighteen as the flight goes on.

Level and Difficulty are two different rows. The Level row is where on the Lesson 5 scale the next flight sits — the same levels the course wall is divided into, numbered the same way. Each level flies the leg the lesson has reached: the lesson's early levels board through the safety demonstration and cruise, and from level five the meal service and landing hold at their fullest while the lesson keeps going. The three difficulties are how much of each line is written down: Beginner puts the respell and the English under every sentence, Intermediate the respell alone, Advanced the Arabic by themselves. The difficulty is a free choice at every level. It is the fifth lesson of the Egyptian course, and it picks up where Egyptian Airport: Check In — the check-in hall — leaves you at the gate.