Today I slept long, wrote emails, got rid from the bags of the stuff which had reached the end of its life cycle, like biscuits and Chinese batteries, I looked for and out contacts together, invoices, flying pieces of paper I had accumulated, and not yet lost, in these two months …
I could have gone to visit many things in this city which has immediately become my favorite in Africa, even supposing that geography apart, Cairo and Egypt are Africa. But I did not, both for the late wake up, and because I did not want to close myself in a museum of mummies or to get a boat for tourists, when outside there is this alive city, real, which moves even though the Ramadan inevitably wears out the vitality of who fasts. I preferred to walk to Tahrir Square, which was the center not only symbolic of the revolution started in 2011, I am personally very cautious on these revolutions only time will tell if these revolutions, which have caused and are causing thousands of deaths, were for the better of the populations. I was reading a few days ago that in Tunisia, where there is one of the most advanced constitutions in the Arabic world, if the draft of the new constitution will pass as it was proposed on the first stage, women will not be the same as men, but complementary … Seeing this Cairo like this it seems impossible to think that this country can end up in the hands of the most intransigent Muslims, a first step to understand how things will go is understanding if and when elections will be called.
In my small sample, absolutely not statistical, I did not find anybody a part from the police of Al Balyana, who is happy of how the nation is going.
My hotel is about four kilometers from the square, the roads made exception for the bridge which crosses the Nile, are full of people and shops, in some lateral roads there are tables full of people ready for the first meal of the day, even under the bridge the are some set tables, with people waiting just for the go ahead from the mosque, the carpets of Sudan let way to tables and among the ‘customers’ I noticed also some women.
On the way I did not have the sensation to be in danger, like I could have, when next to me there were complete families busy shopping, watching shops’ windows and trying clothes and shoes on display outside the shops on. When I reach the square it is practically already dark, but I am struck by the quantity of people eating and chatting.
Squares, newspapers stands, taxis with taximeters, traffic lights, ice-cream parlors, American fast foods, reinforce my idea to be in a city with capital C, moreover this kind of movida which animates the roads leaving from Tahrir Square, is the perfect surrounding to walk, relax and try to loosen up the legs after all these kilometers. Here life is perceived and the desire to live to be outside, to move, in contrast those Johannesburg shopping centers come to mind, often combined with a casino, like for example Montecasino, where inside a typical Italian town has been reenacted accurately, with plastic plants, fake sky , ‘trattorie’ and Thai restaurants, fast foods, sad and obese people attach themselves to the slot machines for hours drinking coca cola … rich people go there … they park in the underground parking … pass through a scan and body search … and find themselves in the plastic Italian town … which even though I have never tried must be the same making love to a blow up doll … it is the problem of these cities grown on the disproportion between very rich and very poor with many fears where people prefer to close themselves rather to open up … obviously I prefer Cairo all along … Cairo has been an unexpected discovery and certainly I will come back with more time.