Being in Cairo

It's a strange feeling to be in Cairo. Things are more convenient in a way and far worse in others. My privilege gives me protection from some parts of the ruthless city. A car, a flat and you're ready to shut out all those voices of inconvenience. I should be ready to step outside the car for a while and deal with the annoyances of the parking attendants, most of whom are government informers. I also have to deal with whatever bureaucracy exists in public as well as private enterprises. Everything is forbidden without reason, or rather a hidden reason or one that does not respect you. The private business owners have mimicked the top down government approach of asking their employees to follow instructions without questions.

Yes, questions are the enemy, because they demand answers. The biggest question is 'Why?' and the answers are what most people want to avoid because the truth is inconvenient. Why do I have to wait in line? Why is everything so inefficient? Why are there more hard drugs in the market? Why don't the police arrest criminals? Why do innocent people languish in jail? So many questions and the answers are known but not spoken. The answers are so dark that people prefer to pretend they are a mystery.

Yet a house and some money can go a long way to shield you from the idiocies of society. They can't however block news of injustice and they can't block the injustices you see each day when you step outside for a while and they can't bring back dignity, only buy you some cheap knock off that disappears as soon as your money does, or as soon as your opinions become inconvenient. 

The guitar keeps me company. It creates a beautiful sound from touch. I get better at it. I pick the difficult pieces because they challenge me. I need some sort of challenge that I can take on. I can no longer do the moral challenges as immorality triumphs again and again. Let me look to the physical if I can. Maybe I can do more pull ups, more push ups, more sit ups. Maybe I can play harder pieces. Maybe I can build some furniture with wood. Maybe stain my wood better, finish it better. 

This is Cairo for me now. An attempt to escape its brutal reality. It is constantly coping even at times when I'm just having fun. 

At times I walk down the streets and it all overwhelms me, but that's a story for a different day. Right now it's 3 am and I'm happy to think of Cairo from the comfort of my quiet space. 

Dispatches from Cairo

A long forsaken blog. Blogging might be dead in some way. Writing is not. I have allowed the blog to die over the years as social media started to take hold of distribution. A facebook status or a twitter post were a replacement. Mostly because the point was about influencing people at a time of political fluidity. The dreams of contributing to a positive change died slowly as people in Egypt turned their back, not to blogs, or social media, but to the question of morality as a whole. What is the point of persuading people who do not want to act based on morality but opt for an notion of pragmatism that is rather impractical and only serves to camouflage their moral bankruptcy. 

As time has passed, the social media companies are controlling our content, siding with oppressive governments for an easy buck. It may not be the time to influence but to archive and document once again like the pre-revolution times. This year I will try and document some of the thoughts independent of transient social media. This platform now is far from perfect, but at the very least attempts to evade the continuous data games that are carelessly played by big social media companies who aim to control the spaces they once claimed were free. 

My time in Cairo is full of observations, social now, less political. As I walk through the streets my mind wanders to various things from seeing the potholes, the frail infrastructure and the economically defeated faces on the streets. 

Maybe I'll write once a month, or once every two months, but I will attempt to keep this going like once before and if I don't, I'm asking me to forgive me, because I know how overwhelming it has become to try and express myself in the face of trauma, depression and the frequent visits of hopelessness. I can only remind myself that even then it may have some value to express how I feel.

I'm hoping to be able to find more personal dispatches in the future worth noting. Or maybe this is just a brief awakening that won't last. Who knows.

The Best Vengeance

Wherever you go, everyone wants to control you and belittle you even or rather especially when they are half as competent as you are at doing anything. They anger you, boss you around, tell you off and explain mundane illogical things as though they are the rulers of the earth as if they were gods and you were born into their small and petty world. They want to infuriate you, make you feel helpless, make you feel small, they play a dirty game of withholding that which they could give you because it's that which you desire. They feel they are better people for degrading better people, and they smile at your frustration and your agony.

There is a way to take revenge other than blowing up the places they work at, or ridiculing them (although both ideas sound great). The most effective way is not to let them get to you and not to let them frustrate you or annoy you and even if you want to fight them, fight them with peace, fight them with an understanding of their sick and cruel nature. Fight them as you fight a disease within a person, with abhorrence to the disease rather than the person, with knowledge that sometimes they are victims and that's why they cause these casualties. Fight them with the knowledge that if they do not get to you, it makes you better, and disables the disease.

If you can control yourself and smile upon their cruelty rather than have it get to you, and be immune to their mindless game plays even if it costs you time, even if it costs you something, then even if you've lost, they've lost as well which means you've won something at least.

One thing remains, and it is perhaps the most difficult to accept even for me, as I have been targeted by these kinds of people numerous times. Whenever you're in a position of power over people, do not be the same way they were with you, even if they themselves make way into your world and you have power over them. You must treat them with fairness and kindness and be a just god in your world unlike they've been. It is the only fair way to take revenge even if they do not understand it and even if you yourself do not understand it. By logic, it would take thousands upon thousands of words to express why this would be a victory, and even then it might not seem convincing, but there's a feeling I have within me, that words do not describe well, that tells me that this is the way to win if it were a competition, this is a way to repay their evil.

A feeling like this can be ridiculed, debated, rejected or even neglected, but the one thing going for it is that it can be felt. It can be felt by someone who doesn't understand how it all adds up, who can see a victory in retaining goodness when all others have failed to and cannot recognize it anymore. It's a feeling that's so deep that not even the greatest can reach it, not even the most evil can beat it, it's their ultimate enemy, and all their actions are determined to reach that core and tear it down, but just like the good man cannot explain it or reach it by any logical means except by feeling, so also the evil ones cannot destroy it by actions if we do not let those actions get to us.

The Visit

I wish Obama would have stayed longer. I wish Obama would have visted more places in Egypt. The result would have been magnificent. For starters there would have been more trees and greenery in the streets and they would have been in many more places. There would have been more roads fixed all around the broken down Cairo. If he would have gone by my street those old gray buildings would have been painted. If he would have travelled to the south, those old broken down death highways would have been fixed. If he would have visited hospitals they would have been equipped with the basics that hospitals should have.

The list goes on and on, but it would have been great if Obama visited every inch of this country, and I don't mind not going to work and being under house arrest for a few hours every day, it'll be worth it at the end. Only that after he leaves, the trees will be taken away, plants will be removed like they were the next day from Cairo University. The roads will be destroyed, the garbage will be re-installed to its previous location and the people who were in charge of making these temporary arrangements would become so much richer.

It amazes me that we can do everything right if we choose to, I really respect this country's potential. Why aren't we doing this more often? Do we need to tell Obama to come here and live for a while so that Egyptians can do things right? Do we need to give Obama the citizenship here? Do we need to ask Obama to take on some sort of part time responsibilities in Egypt? Or do we need to do more?

One of these days I'd like to see the world through Mubarak's eyes. I'm guessing I'll be seeing lots of pink.

4am Shot

This isn't the best shot I've taken, and it's a seemingly ordinary shot, but something about this photo is very representative of a friendly enjoyable Cairo in the still of the night. It's that nostalgic feeling this photo radiates that makes me want to come back to Cairo whenever I find myself outdoors in another city in the dead of the night.. maybe I'm saying this cause of how I was felt when taking the shot. The lovely weather, the empty street, the silence and yet safety of the road.. one lone man walking down the street in the middle of the night..

Stand Up Cairo

Cairo is a comedy cow and we're milking it.

Stand Up Cairo is reviving the lost art of Egyptian stand up comedy. We will be holding auditions on the 15/16 April from 6-10 pm during which talented individual performers will be invited to perform a five minute skit of original material in Arabic or English. We are talking here about classic stand up: one (wo)man and a mic. We are not interested in theatre troupes, nor do we want re-enactments of 1960s monologues. We are looking for the accountants, students, waiters and doctors who find the comedy in Cairo's craziness, who can speak their mind and make us laugh.

What: Stand Up Cairo auditions
When: 15/16 April 2007 from 6-10pm
Where: CiC (Contemporary Image Collective) 20 Safeya Zaghloul St. off Kasr El Aini St., Mounira
Contact: standupcairo@gmail.com
Website: http://standupcairo.blogspot.com
Telephone: 02 - 3377535


If you can see this, tell your funny friends about it, and if you're a blogger, why not help us find some talent.

Invitation To Ride

So I cycle to work every day. It’s not a long distance really, something like 10-15 minutes by ‎bike or the equivalent of 20-30 minutes by car. Cairo is not at all designed for bicycles but ‎then again neither is it designed for cars or pedestrians or even humans. I used to cycle from ‎place to place when I had my freestyle bike as a child, but all that changed since it broke ‎down and I sort of outgrew the freestyle stuff. Anyway it did take a bit of courage to decide ‎to cycle in Cairo to and from work, especially that I was showered with warnings from ‎everyone who came to know of my plan. ‎

The warnings were concerning many aspects, firstly the pollution in Cairo, instead of actually ‎doing a sport that would benefit my body, I would be augmenting the inhale of pollution to ‎bring about more quickly the ruin of an already deteriorating pair of lungs. Another problem ‎was traffic; driving in Cairo is chaotic enough as it is without the disadvantage of having to ‎deal with it from a vulnerable exposed bike. Being a driver myself I can see how anymore ‎space used up by a bike can cause drivers to go crazy with rage. The pedestrians have left the ‎non existent sidewalk and moved on to the road, but what makes bikers more infuriating is ‎that they move quicker than both cars and pedestrians. They use up little enough road so as ‎to glide through traffic and yet enough to hinder some cars.‎

One more issue that was raised but that is totally absurd is harassment. Yes even guys can ‎get harassed if walking in shorts, or strange clothes or on a bike. Of course I don’t have a ‎poor looking bike like those carrying bread or running errands, so one can expect the same ‎kind of remarks as those I get while going to play football wearing shorts during the winter. ‎Even more, some have warned that I may get some kind of mockery from the not so ‎accustomed workmates. ‎
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But of course that last issue is the least of my worries, relative to the normal population, I’m ‎considered eccentric anyway, and I’ve never cared much for what people say, I’ve been ‎down that road so many times and I discovered that if you’re confident enough people get ‎tired of the strange things you do and eventually start accepting you and sometimes even ‎respecting you.‎

Despite all these warnings, I still decided to cycle to work, and it does have its perks apart ‎from dodging pedestrians walking like zombies unaware of their own existence and yours, ‎the bigger task was to avoid cars that continuously ignore you, almost run you over and then ‎simply smile and apologize. The perks of cycling though other than it being a sport I enjoy a ‎lot is that I get home faster in the deadlocked traffic of Cairo. I can run errands on my way ‎home and I can decide to leave during rush hour rather than rot away in the office. I can ‎enjoy the cold air in the evening and rid myself of that usual feeling of lethargy at the end of ‎a working day. I can actually go back home and decide to go out, not dreading driving to ‎places since I haven’t been locked in a traffic jam for over fifteen minutes. I can even park ‎right next to the office and not go around 10 extra minutes looking for a parking space, with ‎the car, the process of parking is horrendous. ‎

With all these perks comes one that was very unexpected. Owning a bike is like being lost. ‎Not in a bad sense I assure you, it’s just that when people are lost, people are very anxious to ‎help them and get them on the right way and talk to them. That’s what it’s like when some ‎people see me with a bike. I’m talking about the doorman and the security guards and the ‎garage keeper. They’re very excited that I have joined their ranks and run my errands on a ‎bike. One of the security guards was so interested that he asked me if my bike was normal or ‎with “3’eyarat” (gears). The ability to make small talk about the bike is excellent. ‎

I’m not sure why people don’t go to their work on bikes here in Egypt, I mean it may be a ‎bit demeaning, but if more people did it then the traffic won’t be as bad (except on the 6th of ‎October bridge) and the whole biking thing will be generally more accepted. If anything it ‎can attempt to bring closer those rich enough to own cars but choose bikes, and those rich ‎enough to merely own a bike.‎