Cairo.
An eternal dance with the extremes and all the different worlds, trying to expand my being enough to hold it all, find ways to make sense and grasp and understand it all. Who is like what and why is that the case and these are like that and they are like this and somehow we're better yet all the same and freedom and equality take on a million different names. And amongst questions of freedom and expression and development we dance on a stage of broken concrete with distrust and suspicion seeping through the cracks, permeating everything and obscuring sight and reality into one big dusty pile containing a million faces of me, human masks worn interchangeably on this so treacherous stage of life. And some can be found sifting through the pile of rubbish and dirt, looking for strands of authenticity and integrity, the faintest idea of an anchor in this play of life, to be a little more whole in this cast of shapeshifting magicians.
The constant haze interwoven with magic and relicts of an ancient past, so tangible under bending trees in the soft gloomy glow of a few thousand street lights. The clatter of donkey hooves on asphalt, the crunching of car wheels on sand, the dust mixing with smoke and fumes, chatting blending with sirens and car horns. A string of neon lights cutting through the dark, revealing in its mirror image the presence of a mighty and ancient stream.
The dim glow of lights filtering through leaves, the ever present dust softening all hard edges and the only reluctantly lifting heat create the backdrop of the infamously magical arabian nights – a magic that is as tangible as elusive, as ever-present as fleeting.
The harsh light of the sun reveals a wholly different picture, burning away the sanctuaries of mystery and illuminating the brutal reality of lives built into rubble and ruins, and endless rows of brokenness.
How can the view from above be so strinkingly different than from below, a difference like day and night, asking us once again onto the dance floor for another round of waltzing between extremes, between present and past, affluence and bare survival, strong winds of change and breath-taking stuffiness of unmoving conservatism. And while we're trying new ways we fall over our feet because in this waltz one person has to lead. Do/can we change the music, do/can we change the dance, does the new in the old stand the smallest chance? Is there an opening in this land of walls? Can we peek through - what's behind? Do we take the sledgehammer to the cracks and celebrate as it falls, oblivious to the instant build up of even more, even bigger walls? Do we sit patiently, sipping tea in the shade of a tree, hands open, hearts connected until the winds of change drop some seeds?
Two things seem clear: the only thing that has ever changed hearts and minds is the pure love of a woman – and yet we live in a men's world.
October 2020