Random

Cairo street scenes, By Ed Yourdon

Yesterday I went to sleep at 1 am, I don’t do it often as I have to wake up at 6.30 to go to work. The reason why I did not go to sleep early is simple: the kids were shouting and playing ball at 12.30 am on my street.

 

So imagine me completely furious and wearing a tank top, getting on my balcony and yelling at them. They did not notice me at first – a crazy half naked lady. But they could not ignore me either. So they stared at me and I am sure they did not understand a single word that I was saying. So I yelled: “Yalla! Go home to sleep.” All these words were accompanied by my active gestures. The kids started walking away looking back, I was standing on the balcony just to make sure they left. When they reached the corner one boy turned around and yelled: “Fuck You!” Well, well, education, education …

 

I know it is summer, I know there is no school. But I will never be able to comprehend why parents allow their kids to walk around playing ball after midnight? No one really cares? I have noticed that parents take their children to restaurants and stay up late; they take children to watch a movie at midnight, so that the children scream and make a lot of noise annoying everyone around them. I have seen parents walking on the streets of Cairo with infants late at night. Imagine: cars running around, pollution and noise and little babies sleeping. I just cannot get it: why they do this to their children?  I know that not everyone is like this in here, but I have never seen such a thing in Europe or Russia. I know there are a lot of rude and misbehaved kids all over the world. But right now here, in Cairo I am a bit confused.

 

And then they say: Different culture and different traditions. Well, it is kind of the same as saying: “different culture, that’s why women here have to do this and that.” Cultural relativism all over again … To the contrary, it has nothing to do with the culture: if you check the modern pictures of Egypt and compare them to the pictures of Egypt form the 50s, you will see a significant difference. And then you will wonder: how did the country manage to bounce back so bad? Back in the 50s women wore short skirts on the streets and were not massively veiled like today. And then they say that harassing women on the streets is in their culture, oh, really?

 

Culture can sometimes be a great tool to camouflage ugly things in a nice way.

 

Here is an old Egyptian Coca Cola ad from 1950s. check out women outfits and hair.

 

 

Women march on Tahrir

Cairo never sleeps. You can order a pizza delivery at any time: at night or early in the morning. It is just like Moscow that does not sleep either. In Moscow you can have a haircut at 2 am if you want to. Protesters in Cairo don’t sleep either; protests are in a non-stop mode right now: whenever you switch on the TV you will see reports about it.

The shocking story of a veiled woman being undressed on the streets of the city by the local policemen still terrifies the nation. I cannot even imagine how this girl feels: everyone is attacking her trying to get an interview. I cannot imagine how it feels to be veiled and publicly humiliated. What happened to her is just beyond any understanding and is simply outrageous.

These scary images were spread virally across the world.

However, women of this country are not scared, they are not afraid to stand up for themselves by marching through Tahrir square. Thousands of them showed support for this girl who suffered this humiliation. It was clearly the biggest protest that women organized in Egypt, they openly declared their position and demanded the military to stop such abusive actions. Well it seems that military council simply ignored them; moreover it might be their new tactics to portray women-protesters as some sort of a disgrace.
Women with different background and economic standing were all united at this protest. Religion views, age and clothing styles did not matter at all.

You can see more images here and here.

Here is another video showing multiple cases of police brutality. A woman who made this video was trapped in her car on Tahrir square and was hiding in the car during the protest. Policemen are very well aware that a mobile camera could cause a lot of harm, therefore they were extremely aggressive with people trying to film the events, not to mention they destroyed all the professional cameras set on the surrounding buildings.

Those images became known due to the wide usage of the mobile cameras and social networking. It is impossible to imagine such a broad public discontent, let’s say, a hundred years ago – people simply would not know what happened.