Cairo (Day 1 - 2)

Another count down of 24 hours: 2 buses, 2 planes and 3 taxis later, I was in the Dokki district of Cairo, fumbling in the dark night and starting to see Egypt.

Before boarding the flight to Cairo, I managed to squeeze in a quick stop @ Flowers Gallery in Shoreditch, London to see Nadav Kandar's latest series of landscape photographs titled "Yangtze, the long river". The title is a direct translation of the Chinese name for the Yangtze river, but it also signifies the sentiment along the river banks just prior to the current moment in time. These photos juxtapose the rural, formerly agrarian river banks with concrete and steel, formulating a new landscape where only farmlands existed 20 years ago. It acutely captures how commercialism has been infused into China, change brought on by the Chinese and yet also, as seen in some of the images, forced upon them.

At times it is really shock and awe the "reforms" carried out by the Communist regime in China, how completely it erased shreds of sentimentality and tradition and replaced it with an ambition and will for "the way forward." Even the photos reflect the result of the new belief. While the contrast starkly exhibits how fast the middle kingdom is changing, yet I didn't quite see the sense of displacement that one would expect from people undergoing such a dramatic wealth transformation. Landscape may be erased and replaced yet the eyes of the people show them living in the present. Here in Cairo, it feels the opposite. Although it hasn't been lost in modernity, it certainly holds on to a bigger part of the past, particularly in the religious sense.

Coming out of the airport last night, the roads were new and heavily congested with cars. I was told it wasn't the worst congestion and certainly it was already 10pm. The humming of traffic makes me notice this city seemed completely deprived of women. Men of every age group, in small and large clusters filled the cars, the sidewalks and the entrances to public spaces. I gingerly pull a scarf over my head, trying to blend into the darkness blanketing the city. A guide, when asked about where women go, said "Women are like fine jewelry, beautiful objects to be kept inside a box to be only seen by their owner." The romance died after the first pause of breath.

Short sleep (or what feels like the 3rd nap in the last day) later, I found the other participants of my small group and set off for Giza Pyramids. Our guide Ahmed is a young egyptian man probably in his mid 30s. Clearly proud of the history of Egypt, he set off the tour with a 3000 years of Egyptian history in a 30 minute car ride talkshow. For the first time, it clicks for me that why Islam has such a strong hold in this country. Whether polytheistic, pagan, christian or ultimately muslim, Egyptians have always lived revolving around religion, thousands of years before arabs even arrived in this land. The Pyramids are the finest, oldest example how religion dominates this society. Sets of 100,000 laborers build for 3 months at a time for 20+ years using 2.3 million bricks to build a tomb for the afterlife of the king, pharaoh, the live image of god on earth.

As dusks comes for my first day in Egypt, the call to prayer sounds throughout the city again. I pack up, leaving on an overnight train to Aswan.

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