Three Dead Cockroaches

21 Feb

Back of the Bus and Three Dead Cockroaches

I started Arabic classes last week and have had two so far with Mona my suffering teacher. It is literally a tongue twister and there are subtle sounds you don’t find anywhere in the spectrum of the English language. Some of the sounds feel a bit like Irish and others like Spanish but none of it helps the lost feeling and brain overloading in trying to say the most simple sentence or in fact repeating something. Will persist though and watching an Egyptian version of Sesame Street with big furry purple things singing the alphabet was good fun and makes me see the pedagogic process as a total ignoramus. I do pity Mona though as I struggle to count to ten, sometimes heading towards twenty!

Have started to find dead upturned cockroaches in the same place of the flat. I found three in the last week and wonder what is happening downstairs. Mosquitoes are starting to make inroads too and I have a nice bite just above my lip. Worst thing is it still chilly.

I’ve gone to some brilliant old photo studios and labs in Cairo. The painted backdrop still exists although they couldn’t believe I wanted a photo made in the real studio when they can do anything awful in Photoshop now. I managed to get a friend, Will, to pose a few weeks back and also had the wife over to visit the San Francisco Photo Studio. They do a lovely pasty digital corrections that makes you look oddly like a TV presenter in the 1980s or part of the cast of the Love Boat (Robert Wagner). They also do amazing cross dissolving photos which I am looking at getting one made. Not sure what to montage yet….

The contradictionary character of Cairo continues to occupy the mind. The university is a wealthy institution with most students drawn form the ranks of the upper section of Egyptian society. However the recent death of a student in the football match at the start of the month has caused a number of memorials to be erected and regular political events and protests. And lectures involving radical groups like Kazeboon (Liars) who screen video footage the public to raise awareness and show the on-going violent attacks by the State, where recently on campus. What is more a group of students were arrested for a few days but released without charge. The story goes they had gone to interview a well known activist and were suddenly attacked by an unknown group of men. Luckily the police were on hand and whisked them to safety and days of interrogation.

Football fan injured in the attacks in Port Said this month

When I went to the swimming pool on Monday I poked my head into the sports hall. There was the usual sports going on in the wooden floor and then I noticed a running track platform elevated above with a single runner. This jogger was in the normal attire except for the addition of a hijab, a surprising image to western eyes and I had never thought if wearers would remove such garments for sport.
Life in Cairo has returned to some normality and although some are still camped out in Tahrir and murals are added to but there is little to report. Now the Murbarak trial is under the spotlight and there is a momentum to sentence him before the presidential elections, estimated to be in June. I have started to edit video footage I got since arriving and was struck by the experience of watching the images of the event. The intensity shifts and it becomes part of the mediated realm, somehow detached and diminished.

In Cairo it appears most people are catching their breath and I have noticed art openings and other cultural activity starting to resume. Hopefully the weather will pick up and I can get rid of my winter woolies.