Cairo

Cultivating Hate In Children

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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On the same day that Arafat finally condemned the terrorism against Israel, his wife, who lives in Paris, granted an interview with an Arabic-language magazine, Al Majalla, wherein she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.

My eye caught the following feature article that Mary Kelly, former editor of Egypt Today magazine and who lived in Cairo for 8 years, reported to the Herald Tribune: “…children, still in their school uniforms, were seen laughing and changing as they half-marched, half skipped along the sunny road in Cairo, toting knapsacks and book bags.”

The account continued: “One might have thought it was an ater-school field trip if it were not for the boys in the center displaying a Palestinian flag…In the evenings, Egyptian family members swapped stories of their children participating in such demonstrations. Over dinner at home with one family in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo, Fatma, 10, told me how an older boy at school rallied her classmates on the playground during recess. Their rhyme was addressed to Ala Mubarak, son of President Hosni Mubarak, “We sang ‘Ala, Ala, tell your father the Americans will not help you!”

Unicef has called for an end to the Israeli-palestinian violence for the sake of the children…against a backdrop of rising anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in the Arab world, children are getting powerful messages about who their enemies are. In Egypt, TV is showing virtually nonstop news coverage of the crisis and nationalistic, pro-Palestinian programming. Old footage of Palestinian children being shot and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers roll in slow motion with melodramatic music playing in the background (we saw it on the TV in the hotel)…A political solution…won’t erase these mental images…and America gave the green light, the adults say over and over again.

A UNICEF rep in the West Bank said on CNN that ‘it will be a question of one, two, even three generations.'”

Driving & Cueing in Egypt

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Drivers have immense patience with each other-each car gives way to the others like a million fish in a school swimming this way and that…narrowly missing one another but gracefully swerving away in time…implicit cooperation you would never see in the States.

No one would steal anything from you, the tour operator says, except for the occasional pickpocket. I suspect he is right-we never worried a bit about our things.

Told a tout, when he asked why we went to Islamic Quarter instead of Cairo Museum, that we wanted to experience live people-not dead ones…way of saying we wanted to get a feel for contemporary Egypt. We sorta did…

Tucked away amid the modern urban area of Cairo lies one of the world’s oldest Islamic cities, with its famous mosques, madrasas, hammams and fountains. Founded in the 10th century, it became the new centre of the Islamic world, reaching its golden age in the 14th century. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The style of cueing in line is very different than in the US where we frown on people crowding in or even acting like they want to be first in line as being a very selfish thing. The jostling is incredible so we just usually sit and wait until everyone gets off the plane or bus or train and then we get up and go.

Cairo Egypt

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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On April 21, 2002 while waiting for our flight from Athens to Cairo, we visited briefly with a gentleman sitting next to us who was on his way to Alexandria for what we thought was the dedication of the new Biblioteca Alexandrina (Alexandria Library). He was on the Board of Trustees I heard him tell an associate. When we boarded the plane a picture of the spectacular new library was on the cover of Horus, the Egypt Air magazine. The original library built by the Greeks in the fourth Century burned down in a fire so now President Mubarak and UNESCO has rebuilt the library. The design is a simple disc inclined toward the sea, partly submerged in a pool of water and is covered with Aswan granite engraved with calligraphic letters and representative inscriptions from the world civilizations. Really felt I’d missed something by not seeing it.

What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that there had been a huge student demonstration against Israel a few days before and a student had been killed by armed police whereupon Egypt cancelled indefinitely the dedication ceremonies in deference to the Palestinians.

Off the plane, a young Brit who had been in the country about 7 months as a volunteer teacher with the British version of our Peace Corps, jumped into the taxi with us for the ride into Cairo. He spent some time negotiating the fare with the driver. “20 pounds…you said!!” We found out later that they often tell you one price and then when it comes time to pay they up the price-or they will tell you one pound and then when you pull out the money they say “no, no English pounds!” So our taxi driver is getting double fare? “Yes,” he said, “that seems to often be the case here.”

We stayed on the island of Gezira in the middle of the Nile in Cairo. We stayed at the Mayfair Hotel in Zamelak, an area on the north end of the island where there are many embassies. The main street is named Sharia 26 of July to commemorate the fiery coup in 1952 that destroyed all the landmarks of 70 years of British rule.

There are several bridges that cross the Nile to Gezira, the one nearest us being the October 6 bridge, commemorating the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur when Egypt launched a surprise attack across the Suez Canal and restored Egypt’s national pride after the Israeli defeat of the Egyptian forces during the six day war in 1967 when Israel took control of the Sinai peninsula.

The capital of the Old Kingdom of Egypt has some extraordinary funerary monuments, including rock tombs, ornate mastabas, temples and pyramids. In ancient times, the site was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is now an UNESCO World Heritage Site