Thanks to an increasingly globalized industry, I have been working and living in Cairo (Egypt) for a couple of months now ... and while the transition back from the laid-back Copenhagen to the mother of the world (Umm il-Doniya)- as Cairenes so arrogantly and so rightfully call their city- has been less than smooth I am amazed how much of the small things about Cairo I still miss and cherish!
I saw this picture on the BBC news website this morning- scanning the world news on BBC is a daily ritual I haven't been able to lose- and it eloquently summarizes all I love and hate about the center and the matron of the world ...
The caption of this brilliant picture shot by a very perceptive Amr Nabil for the Associated Press reads: "An Egyptian bread seller rides through Cairo’s traffic. High food prices and shortages of subsidised bread have sparked widespread anger and a series of strikes in Egypt".
The vibrant buzz of Cairo city life makes it truly the city that never sleeps! Despite the fact that New York (NY) wrestled this reputation for itself through control of the western media it remains to be confirmed if you can buy a washer/dryer at 3am in New York or if you can find a post office open until midnight anywhere in Manhattan!
Although the picture only captures a slither of that city buzz, with the spectacle that is heartily indigenous to our part of the world, but it also rears an ugly facet of life in Egypt these days where everyday urban poverty is such a fact of life it doesn't even warrant a second glance ... I am amazed at how apathetic people have become and how much worse everyone's life seems to have become ... but if there is anything I have taken to heart from Christopher Nolan's master piece "The Dark Knight" (2008) as articulated by the unfortunate villain Harvey Dent/Harvey Two-Face: "The night is darkest just before the dawn" and it has been pretty bleak for quite sometime now so let's hope dawn is as close as it should be!
