Xiaoqiang is a fresh graduate who graduated from college last year and went to Chad at the end of April.

He met with Qian Dan and Lao Xie when he was transiting in Cairo, and when he said goodbye, Qian Dan looked at his energetic back and said: "Okay, the problem of lack of people in Chad has finally been solved." ”

Lao Xie smiled: "I'll talk about it when I get there, and I'll talk about it when I get there." ”

Lao Xie's calmness is not unreasonable, Xiaoqiang was targeted by gangsters as soon as he got off the plane, was pressed under the gunpoint at the door of the dormitory and robbed, and after being frightened, he fell ill again, and after he got better, he almost collapsed.

He called Lao Xie and wanted to go home, Lao Xie chatted with him on the phone for more than an hour and finally comforted him, and promised to stick to it for three months first, and decided to stay according to the adaptation of these three months.

Qian Dan and Lao Xie sat down on the sofa in the living room, Qian Dan tuned the TV to "Fashion TV", and sure enough, "Victoria's Secret" was playing again. He said to Lao Xie: "I think of your melancholy eyes when Xiaoqiang passed through Cairo, do you have a premonition? ”

Lao Xie sighed: "Chad has left a shadow in my heart. I spent some time in Chad in 2002, and I was in the office with another Chinese employee, and one night he was working overtime in the client room, and I was alone in the dormitory, and someone knocked on the door, and I thought he was coming back, and as soon as I opened the door, a pistol was put on my head, and three robbers, one of them looked at me, and two of them were looting in the room with big bags, and the gun was always on my head. ”

Lu Wentao's butt was still glued to the computer on the dining table, and he interjected: "Do you know how that gun was put on Lao Xie's head? The robber took a pillow between his head and the gun, which made the gun sound quieter and prevent blood from splashing on himself, and the fool was ready to pull the trigger at any time. ”

He finally left the dining table and sat down on the sofa in the living room: "Lao Xie was almost shot in the head, and Lao Tzu was even worse, he was almost bombed by a bazooka." ”

He looked at the shock on Qian Dan's face with satisfaction, and continued: "I went to Iraq on a business trip in 2004, just after the war, there were no flights, and I could only enter and exit by road. On the day of the business trip, the local driver drove, I was sleeping in the back seat, and suddenly I woke up from a dream for some reason, and looked out the window, I! Seeing two people carrying bazookas lazily walking down the hillside on the side of the road, it must be that the guerrillas had been in ambush for a day without waiting for a suitable target and had left work. Luckily, they didn't blow up my car before they left work! By the way, Lao Xie, you can tell Qian Dan the story of that chicken again. ”

"What else are you talking about? Everyone on earth knows it. ”

Qian Dan was very interested: "I haven't heard it, tell me, you still have a story with Egyptian chickens?" ”

Lao Xie is his trademark honest smile again: "What Egyptian chickens, Chadian chickens." Conditions in Chad are much better now than they used to be, and the company already has several people there, as well as brothers from subcontractors. When it was just me and one other brother in Chad, it was so lonely. We really couldn't find anything to play in our spare time, so one day we bought a chicken from the vegetable market and brought it back to feed and play, and later, the biggest pleasure of the two of us having dinner every day became to chase the chicken in the yard and compete to see who caught the chicken first. ”

Lu Wentao disliked Lao Xie's story too blandly, and added with a fluttering eyebrow: "Guess what happened to that chicken in the end?" The chicken was tortured by two beasts every day, and he was so humiliated that he went crazy. Do you know what these two idiots are doing when they get bored after the chickens go crazy? Race to climb trees! Every day after dinner, I climbed a tree next to the dormitory, and the bark of the tree made the two fools bare. ”

Lao Xie smiled from ear to ear, and sighed after laughing: "I hope that Xiaoqiang can persist in Chad, otherwise we will have to find someone to change." ”

Qian Dan listened to the stories told by the two brothers, and sighed from the bottom of his heart: Without the loneliness, hardship, courage and tenacity of one after another "Lao Xie" and "Lu Wentao" in the initial stage of the company's overseas business, where would there be a blowout business development today?

Although there is still bad news, Qian Dan began to know in his heart, and real progress can be expected.

The agency promised to replenish them with several Chinese backbones; He established direct connections with three domestic subcontractors, and under his deception, they were finally willing to increase their investment in software service resources in North Africa and the Middle East, and prepared more than 20 engineers to learn related products in China.

At the end of the training course for local new employees, no matter how well they learned, they rushed to the shelves, Sudanese returned to Sudan, Tunisians returned to Tunisia, and Amar and Sharif, the four most powerful Egyptians, planned to go to the Maldives and Jordan to support the subsidiary's project.

They sorted out the first batch of cases and special reports on software project requirements management, and analyzed the indiscriminate commitment to customer needs in past contracts in the "North Africa and Middle East" and the resulting consequences. Qian Dan sent a large email every three or five times, sending out a wide range of cases and special reports, which received a strong response from up and down, and finally began to synchronize everyone's understanding of the characteristics of software project delivery on one channel.

Qian Dan and Lao Xie can't stay in Cairo as generals in the office. They discussed major projects aimed at several key countries, and tried to fight a few beautiful battles to improve internal and external customer satisfaction and establish the team's brand. The two planned to go on separate business trips, Lao Xie went to Tunisia, and Qian Dan went to Sudan and Syria.

Four local Egyptian employees invited them to dinner at the Nile-side restaurant "Friday's" to meet each other before their respective business trips.

Lao Xie didn't know whether the wind was hot or cold, and he was hesitating to go, but his wife Xiaoling made a phone call that made him even more unable to go out.

Lao Xie and Xiao Ling use "Skype" on the computer every three days to talk on the phone, but this night Xiao Ling dialed Lao Xie's mobile phone directly, which seemed to be a negotiated tone, but it didn't seem to be: "Can you tell your parents about something?" ”

Lao Xie took cold medicine, returned to the dormitory early, and was lying on the sofa. When he heard Xiao Ling's tone, his heart sank: "What's the matter?" ”

"Can they not always interrupt when I teach my baby? Especially your mother, every time the baby finally sits down to learn English with me, she comes to feed the fruit for a while, and comes to memorize Tang poems for a while, which is very bad for the baby to cultivate concentration, when is it not good to memorize Tang poems? Do you have to rush to teach my baby when I am teaching it? ”

Xiaoling is also from Chengdu and followed Lao Xie to Shenzhen. Their son has just turned three years old, Xiaoling's parents are in Chengdu to help her sister take care of the child, and Lao Xie's parents are in Shenzhen to accompany Xiaoling's mother and son.

Lao Xie said cautiously: "You tell your parents yourself." ”

Xiao Ling's tone became stronger: "I said it, it's useless." Your dad was talking next to him, how did you learn English at such a young age? Say that you only started learning English in junior high school, and when you grew up, you went abroad to work. Can it be the same? How competitive are kids now? ”

"They also feel sorry for the baby."

"Oh? I don't feel sorry for the baby? ”

Lao Xie just wanted to calm things down: "I'll tell them when I call them next time, but my parents are not careful, and they don't realize some problems, so you tell them directly, it's okay." ”

"Okay, your family is not careful, I am cautious, I am tired from work during the day, and I like to make trouble unreasonably when I come home at night."

"That's not what I meant."

"That's not what you meant, it's my careful eye that misunderstood what you meant. I hung up, tired, and slept. ”

Lao Xie was still holding his mobile phone and wanted to send another text message to Xiaoling, but he didn't know how to close the problem?

Lu Wentao didn't know when he would go back to the dormitory, and he was still sitting at the dining table. He broke the silence in the room: "Alas, it's been cleaned up again, right? What do you think of your thoughts, you are overseas, let your daughter-in-law live with her parents, lest the world be chaotic. ”

"Holy! When did you get back? When did you sit here? Isn't it like I don't have anyone to take the baby? ”

"No one has a baby, you don't know to hire a babysitter?"

"The old man wants to bring his grandson, but he thinks that if he doesn't come to bring his grandson, he won't be able to help, what do you think I should do?"

"Anyway, among the friends around me, there are at least seven out of ten people who have a bad relationship with their mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the family! You're not around, and you still expect Xiaoling and your parents to get along with each other? Isn't that stupid? ”

Chandan goes to "Friday's" alone, and the four Egyptians are the fat Amar, the bespectacled pedantic Sharif, the honest uncle Hassan, and the shrewd guy Baha who has just graduated from school.

Chandan thought they were recommending an Egyptian restaurant, but when they arrived, they found that "Friday's" was an American restaurant located on the intersection of the Skyrail crossing from 9th Street across the light rail road to the intersection with Riverfront Boulevard.

The melody of "Hotel California" was echoing in the dining room, and they found a table in the open-air courtyard and sat down facing the Nile at six o'clock in the afternoon.

The large river is wide and still water is undercurrent.

Not far from the shore, a small fishing boat is ricketing, and an old man and a young man are slowly collecting their nets on the boat.

In the distance, many white sails for tourists to float come and go, adding a bit of agility to the calm river.

Qian Dan ordered a grilled fish and a glass of mango juice. The salty taste of the grilled fish in "Friday's" is too light, but the mango juice makes him love it, it is a pure juice that is really freshly squeezed and not mixed with a little water, and the taste is mellow and authentic, and there is no sugar water taste of boxed drinks at all.

A few of them chatted about Egypt and China while eating and drinking, and their bodies and moods stretched out like the lush branches and leaves of the old tree beside them.

Seeing Qian Dan staring at the river thoughtfully, Sharif asked, "Mr. Qian, how many rivers are there in China?" ”

Qian Dan was stunned, how many rivers are there in China? Who can count it! But it soon became clear why he asked, because there was only one river in Egypt.

The ancient Egyptian word "Nile" means "great river", and it is the longest river in the world at 6,650 kilometers long, and is the mother river of the Egyptians.

The remains of ancient Egypt are almost entirely located on both sides of the Nile, and more than 90 percent of the population of modern Egypt lives along the Nile and in the delta. It was the irrigation and wetting of the Nile that made it possible for Egypt, with little rainfall, to give birth to a civilization of thousands of years.

Qian Dan thought for a while and said: "There are many rivers in China, two of which are like the Nile, one is called the Yangtze River and the other is called the Yellow River, and they are all regarded as mother rivers by the Chinese. ”

The red sun fell to the end of the Nile, and the people ended their dinner.

Qian Dan noticed more and more knee-high glass bottles appearing on the ground, they were strangely shaped, the bottles contained half a bottle of water, and a long hose led out of the water. Some people were suffocating mist with hoses in their mouths, "gurgling" water.

Sharif told him it was the Arabic shisha, pronounced "Shi Sha" in Arabic, which is said to have originated in India more than 800 years ago, then spread to Iran and Turkey, and gradually became an enduring leisure activity throughout the Arab world.

Amar gave a detailed explanation to Qian Dan, there is a small basin on the top of the hookah, which is divided into two layers with tin foil, the upper layer is burned with a few pieces of charcoal, and the lower layer is placed with smoke sludge, what people want is the taste of this smoke sludge, the common flavors are apple, cantaloupe, mint, strawberry and so on.

"Friday's" is getting smokey, and the American restaurant is transformed into an Arabic shisha house.

At a table closest to the Nile, a tall blonde beauty sat cross-legged on a chair, a little lonely, smoking a bottle of hookah, gazing alone at the north of the river, and her person became a landscape.

Several Egyptians exchanged glances and began to persuade Qian Dan to have a pot. Qian Dan was already ready to move, so he hurriedly ordered an apple-flavored one.

After a while, an old waiter dressed in a traditional gray cloth robe brought a cigarette set.

Qian Dan first played with the delicate glass pot, then took the cigarette holder into his mouth, took a puff carefully, heard the gurgling sound of water in the pot, but did not feel the taste of smoke, and then inhaled vigorously, and finally had a vague tobacco smell and a faint apple sweetness in his mouth, and the sullen fragrance came to his nose. It felt good to take a few puffs, and he completely relaxed, and continued to chat with the Egyptian over the hookah.

Unconsciously, Qian Dan was drunk, dizzy and dizzy, and his stomach was faintly uncomfortable.

Several Egyptians looked at him gesturing to the feeling of dizziness and gloating, as if they had expected it.

When Qian Dan completely disarmed and surrendered, Ammar was afraid of wasting the unfinished cigarette, so he immediately took the pipe, pulled out the cigarette holder, and took a greedy puff, and the smoke suddenly rose and spread in front of him.

When they were full, they waved goodbye. Qian Dan went back to the training center to pick up the computer.

It was the last prayer time of the day, and the guard on duty placed a pistol on the table, but the man knelt on a small blanket beside the table, facing the wall, deep on the ground. The guard had a swollen black bag in the middle of his head, which was made by doing his homework every day and kowtowing reverently.

The office was empty, and Qian Dan went online to do an extended reading for today's fresh experience, and read a vivid text describing the Arabs smoking hookah: "In the clouds and fog, the water is drunk, and the classic time is like going back to the distant past." ”

Turning off the computer, he walked up to the rooftop and calculated the time, it was half past two midnight Beijing time, and Qin Xin had already fallen asleep, and Cairo was full of stars at this end, and a blue flower tree on the side of the road downstairs was blooming so presumptuously, stretching to the nose of Qian Dan on the top of the fourth floor.

The fragrance of the flowers is faint, the smoke is not gone, and he forgets his new Egyptian friends for a while, chewing on the "distant past" like an old cow.

He remembered that he was transferred from Chengdu to Kunming in the autumn of the millennium, with a large suitcase, but he flew to Nanjing for a change in the opposite direction, just because Qin Xin was on a business trip there, and because Qin Xin said that Qixia was beautiful and the red leaves were beautiful.

That afternoon, she opened the door of the hotel room and saw no one, and when she opened the curtains, she jumped off the high windowsill and said childishly, "You know what? I'm actually a princess of a small country. ”

Love should indeed be like a fairy tale, and every girl should be a pampered princess. At that moment, Qian Dan believed that he should be the prince who insisted in the fairy tale.

In the autumn of 2002, they went to Shangri-La in Yunnan Province, and one day they sat on a hillside by the Napa Sea, and the world was so quiet, only the sound of the wind and the bells of passing yaks. The two of them were silent looking at the flowing glow, the lonely snowy peaks, the peaceful villages, the guardian-like barley frames, and a lake on the high mountain, all the troubles of the world were so far away.

"In the clouds and fog, the water is drunk and drunk, and the classic time is like going back in time, back to the distant past."

Another month of separation, thousands of miles across the mountains, the ocean was heavy, and he could not see where her eyes were, but he could still see her gaze in the sky; He couldn't see where her lips were, but he could still touch her kisses in the air.