Traffiphobia

I have lately taken the conscious decision not to learn driving and therefore never to drive around Cairo for the sake of the barefoot children and the beautiful furry creatures in the streets.

I never really found driving any titillating at all in a city where the average speed has dropped to 20 kph on most roads. I look around and wonder how there are so many cars and too much poverty. And when you look inside cars, there is only a driver and four empty seats, which creates a traffic mess. Of course, this wouldn't have been the case had there been decent public transportation. But public buses are either too crowded, too late, or too full of perverts. These reasons are undeniable, but there's a deeper lurking reason yet. Most middle-class and upper-class Egyptians wouldn't use public transportation as it would seem demeaning and scandalous. It's like descending the social scale, somehow, because you don't get to pay using a Visa card.

Most of my friends and colleagues drive, and they're always going on about how nerve-wrecking, back-breaking and heartbreaking driving is. I am usually easily offended, so I can as well do away with more stress, thank you very much.

Instead, I just like to hop in taxis. I have always hated taxi drivers and viewed them as bloodsucking mosquitoes until I read Khaled El-Khamissi's larger than life book; Taxi. It was a total paradigm shift. The book does not make any attempt to either disparage or glamourise them, it simply chronicles incidents that are real to the point of smacking you in the face. So, following the author's footsteps, I would sometimes engage in a chit chat with drivers, waiting to hear an unembellished truth about any given subject. Of course I also started the conversation once because the driver was a Jason Statham look-alike.

It is annoying to have to beg for ten taxis to take me home though it is ridiculously close to work, but I will be buying my comfort and instead enjoy watching the comic Egyptian streets in every ride. Moreover, I have acquired a hint of fierceness through the years, which should make taxi rides safer.

The Sysiphean Challenge

You would think that after all the massive protests, national and international outcries against torture in Egypt, the torturers would recoil, or at least think twice before plucking out someone's fingernails, repeatedly beat him to death and dump his body in a lake.

What with the excrutiating pain poor Ahmad Shaaban must have felt before meeting his bitter, untimely end. What with the mad cruelty, insane brutality Egyptian police are exceptionally capable of.

What is the use of tweeting, of blogging about it? What is the use of pulling up a Facebook page in his name, with hundreds of thousands of members? What is the use of protesting? It will all fall out of place again. We are just pushing the weight of justice up a long, winding hill, only to fall back, crushing us after taking that much effort.

We only ever speak up to escape shame. To chase away an ever elusive hope of never having to wake up to news of police brutality. To save ourselves the embarrassment of not speaking up.

I wish I hadn't lived to this day.

Egypt’s Emergency Law Strikes Again! - Marwa Rakha

Egypt’s Emergency Law Strikes Again! - Marwa Rakha

Fucking disgusting!

Marriages Gone Wrong

Having witnessed at point-blank range varying levels of stupidity when it comes to getting married, I am compelled to write a blogpost, to console myself above anything else. I have learnt, among other unfortunate things during my twenty-something years that people are capable of actually ruining their lives and then look back and blame it on everyone except themselves.

Stupid Friend 1 got married to someone who had, during their so-called relationship, demeaned her and her family. He happily went on with his life when they broke up, but she kept calling him, and calling him, and begging him to marry her, risking to give many of her legal rights in the process. She went ahead and married him eventually, and for the sake of my sanity I won't try to imagine how there life will be like.

Stupid Friend 2, no REALLY Stupid Friend 2, already noticed during her engagement her beau's shortcomings, so did her dad, but they went on with the marriage anyway, akin to Really Stupid Friend's bizarre behaviour and off-the-handle mood swings. Not surprisingly, her mood swings turned to tornadoes after marriage, and she's now back in her dad's home, with a hapless child in tow.

Despite the different circumstances in which both marriages took place, I can see a similarity between them; a desparate avoidance of social stigma. It is a shame to be unmarried, so I could just throw myself in any pitfall, better than ending up alone. I cannot understand their mindsets. Whatever happened to common sense? How can ruining you life, and bringing into the world an innocent fatherless child be so common? I know, it's always desire. Even where they do not want to admit this, they were just seeking sexual gratification. Of course I am not disparaging this, I am just wondering what they thought they'd be doing for the rest of their lives when sex would no longer be fun.

I have heard someone say this over the radio and I will keep remembering it in case my friends' stupidity becomes contagious. Loneliness is better than bad company. Looking at my friends' choices now, I thank the gracious heavens that I am single. And if no one should prove worthy of my company, I know that I have enough self-confidence and sanity to do everything which marriage and lactation does not allow me.

Random virtues of growing up

With age comes confidence, at least to most people.
1) Yesterday I passed randomly by some government employees. As usual they were eating lebb. (For shame, what does lebb mean in English? Pulp?) I said salamo aleko but then I looked again, not because I was offended they were fusing leisure with supposed work, but because I usually get the where-are-you-going question. They soon burst into laughter, probably out of embarrassment. Now winding back to ten years ago, I would wonder what the hell is wrong with my t-shirt, or the way I walk, or my salamo aleko, and walk home in tears.

2) You realise that Titanic is also about gender inequality, class conflict and major script failures on the part of Cameron, and not just the touch-me-in-steamy-car love plotline.

3) The more you lose people through death or other more cruel means, the more you appreciate who you have now.