featuring Cairo. One on the political situation and the significance of the recent riots (not only are the people afraid of the government...these days the government is also afraid of the people)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/world/middleeast/07egypt.html
And an article about the wonderful absurdity of living in Cairo, and the way that this city, as I have written before, manages improbably to function in spite of itself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/world/middleeast/14cairo.html
I have somehow, through my postings, made my father doubt whether he wants to vist Egypt. I have made a note to myself to write more about all the things that I love in this city. I suppose, just like a newspaper, the annoying and disturbing seem more worthy of comment than "things still good."
While, in similar fashion, neither of these articles is a particularly glowing review of Cairo, both, I think, demonstrate the triumphantly dogged pragmatism of Cairenes. Cairo is loud, and dirty, and vexing in many ways, but this is what makes it such a real place to spend time. To live here is to live a gloriously unsterile existence, where one is confronted by beggars and crippled people and trash and weddings and funerals and barbers and car accidents and noise and all other components of human existence every minute of every day. There is no fluid infrastructure to sweep the unpalatable, the unsanitary, the raucous, out of the way.
This is precisely why ex-pats can come from England and America and fall in love with something that seems, in its differentness, to be less desirable--to be almost unliveable. When you have been confronted by life in all its terrible, wonderful, difficult, thrilling realness, the street-cleaned suburbs of America start to seem a snow globe by comparison. These very difficulties, and the lifestyle and worldview that Egyptians have formed in response, are what give Cairo its ability to indelibly impact all those who have the intrepid lucidity to come.
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3 comments:
you are our ears and eyes to Cairo...so enlighten us!n
Jen, This is just a test to see if my posts make it to you.
One might say intrepid . . . but lucid? For a lucid man, "gloriously unsterile" is an oxymoron that conjures up images of the female reproductive tract or the diverse microflora of the large intestine - not necessarily a place where one would want to spend an extended period of time. While, like Cairo, the colon can be "loud, and dirty, and vexing in many ways", in contrast it does provide a "fluid infrastructure to sweep the unpalatable, the unsanitary, the raucous, (depending on your last meal) out of the way." So it would seem the large intestine is a step up the evolutionary scale from Cairo.
With regard to the female reproductive tract, many comments concerning "life in all its terrible, wonderful, difficult, thrilling realness" come to mind. These thoughts are probably best left to lazy evenings of whiskey, cigars and male comradeship. For now, the snow globe wins out.
I concur with your plans to accentuate the positive.
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