Teeming masses
Seething Soylent streaming from corner to corner ...jammed cars and bikes of every kind. Camels here and there dotted with tired out flogged fagged horses in a faceless world of exploitation caked in desert dust and sand and carbon monoxide.
It really is a cesspool of dirty humanity clawing each other on the pyramid of life.
Yet somehow... somewhere in all of these contradictions from Giza to Nasr City to Downtown to all the ever increasing sprawled out mess of crumbling colored red bricked half finished buildings that never change... it's a perfect anarchy that works in a way little understand. Nor try to. Here in these confused narrow streets you may meet in Khan El Kalili an ex president. Or a movie star. Or an unheard of savant...
- Smoking cigarette after cigarette as he creates his masterpieces in cotton or papyrus. Or a refugee from the Sudan surviving on giving henna designs to willing hands. And squeezing each bit of compassion you might have into the cash that is in your pocket.
Who can tell ? It is totally random. I met Jimmy Carter whilst drinking a Turkish coffee outside a hash shop in 1983. True.
It is unexplained. And amongst all the falling daily golden dust from yonder desert winds . You may come upon a temple of ISIS surrounded by a fence.. or a Sufi school now a mosque. Quite by happenstance.
Always it is alive...always a surprise. A whole family of five on a motorbike...or a bicycle with enormous trays of bread balanced on a head careering down the road somehow keeping it together.
From her bazaars of spices and gold to her sprawling traders from Gaza and elsewhere. Something is always going on in Cairo. Never boring.
And despite all the paradox and complete disorder there are lessons to be learned. If observing the beauty of the young stars all dressed in their religious garb ... Their inquisitiveness. Their desire to connect. Their smiles in the trash of existence that blackens their faces daily in the constant pollution of life. And despite all this...it was Omar shariffs favourite place and ultimately his rest. Where as an immigrant he fell in love and became the famous actor he was.
O the horror. O the tradedy. Dr Zhivago in a pristine soviet town it is not.
And the millions of inhabitants cramped altogether doing life in this organism on the river Nile in its delta with its heat .. and flies . And mosquitoes and dust. ..it's here...
To learn. To be seen with. Touch. This city affords all And anyone a view of another way of living together.
E -kip -tos ...the "land of the Copts "... Egypt. Misr. Kismet. Of temples...of secrets underneath the hot desert sands...of Feluccas down the Nile...of mysteries and archeology. Cairo a city of 35 million. And growing. Dusty..dirty..disgusting...yet in this divine milieu we see a mirror of our own minds and in its whirlpool of lostness..we find clarity.
And in this city everyone is hear to e kipt. Or grab a little tip... A baksheesh.. from small to great.
Every directional distraction from carts and cars to bikes and bodies strewn on the pavement with outstretched hands. Gone is the shame...gone with the clouds of debris blowing through its avenues and boulevards.
Nobody can afford disillusion but it's here nonetheless.its here alright. This is the real deal.
As if to bring this to life everywhere on the streets and cafes ..in the bars and I. The taxis. It's some faceless voice speaking or singing at the Koran suras instead of the latest pop music. Women some are footloose and freeze but others ..the most are covered from head to toe to keep them in check... In their prayer life. In their Deen . But in truth it's obscene to see the loss of.free will and choice when one suffers indecision.
Or oppression. But in This merry go round of pandemonium we see the good guys... The ones who do really believe in a higher power. Once upon a time on the streets of Cairo eating a liver and onion sandwich I pondered to myself how is it that someone could live in this mess and still not lose themselves in it.
Yet the Holy family fleeing their persecutions did so. And their fingerprints are still upon the region.
The old city can be reached by metro.Actually the metro is air-conditioned and not bad.. but like everything in Egypt it emerges from a maze on the street aboveground in a tiny entrance that can easily be missed amongst the hoards. ( I can't understand why many people have to squeeze through a small space - perhaps it's a cultural way of controlling many )
Old Cairo like the city of the dead and the citadel has loads of dusted ghosty buildings that have this haunting look from a past era .. the same as the ancient elevators made of wood. You often wonder how is it they actually keep working for so long.
But somehow they do. Otherwise you end up climbing a lot of stairs. And the people live amongst the crammed streets missing each other by millimetres.
There are no traffic rules in Cairo. If you drive it's only the brakes and the hooter . The rear view mirror is of no consequence. And just like the old days... You must ask at least 6 people for directions if your internet doesn't work.
Even with Google it's still a chaotic non Utopia city that is spread eagles across miles and miles of ugly cement landscape.
Although some residential buildings do have stuccoed colours facades or if they are painted some few wall murals. But they are not the norm.
In this soylent green nightmare you can easily find yourself liking it's chaos as it mirrors your own mind with every distraction and temptation that floats by trying to suck your energy in any way it can.
There's a saying in Cairo.. ( one I made up actually but one that I'm repeating from others too.. ) " If you can do ONE thing in Cairo each day your day is a success!"
The traffic is horrendous. Constant beeping. So beyond doing one thing if you can... Do it well. Go see old Cairo museum or the Coptics living in the graves.
Or go on a cruise on the Nile. Or wander all day aimlessly in the great Khan El Khalili bazaar. In Cairo there is something for everyone. Find a quiet corner if you can and read a book. Cairo is a maelstrom of attention seeking millions living in a dirty hell. But it's a hell that becomes interesting in its random chaos that repels order. The funniest thing I saw is the way people cross the street.
You would think that if you have thousands of people wanting to cross at a particular point every day they would build a safe crossing to do so. They don't. Instead they squeeze through the bars of a fence in the middle one by one and dodge the cars to get to the other side. Every day. Do people suffer ? Yes. People collapse. I've seen it. In the heat of day.
Horses suffer as they are beaten to death climbing the road towards the pyramids.Its terrible to see in this day and age . But that's capitalism. People need to eat. Animals come second...
And are tossed in the garbage dump. But at least they are buried. The horses are just thrown on the manure shit heap. But that's ok . Because this town is anti order. It's all about survival.from one day to the next.
It's a controlled anarchy. It hasn't broken down to complete mayhem. There is a social order. And that is defined by it's religion as they sit I the coffee shops watching people go around and around a black stone in a foreign land. It's this constant zealous chanting that keeps some semblance of coherence in an otherwise broken world.
It was more Oum Kalsoum in the past. More flavours. More character. More colour. Cairo is more or less the same..nobody cares. But compared to New York or London it has more unpredictability. More life. More adventure. That's Cairo.
O..the HORROR!
In the hollowed out stomach of a dead dried up horse we saw a dog gnawing at it's meatless bones living in a perfect home for his kind. That's Cairo. Uglyness and beauty in macabre harmony. At One.
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