The Curious Life of a Bag Called Cairo - 1

It was, to start, just a really pretty canvas bag that was useful to have --stuffed in the bottom of some other bag--for groceries, an overflow of books, market finds and the like. 

As it travelled with me through Europe and the Middle East, however, the little bag called Cairo took on a bit of a life of its own, and seemed to tell a story bigger than its self. 

More than just a reusable canvas sack, the little Cairo bag wanders the world eliciting reactions and creating stories that tell a lot about how places and people relate to Cairo. More than Cairo though, the bag seems to come to symbolize something that seems lost; lost connections, lost friendships, or a lost golden period where Cairo seemed the centre of the world, umm ad-dunya...home to Umm Kulthum, Arab Nationalism, and maybe most importantly, the locus of optimism exported to a whole region. 

Tiles of the 20s make Palestinian comeback

 Jalal Aslan Tiles is the only place in Palestine that makes --by hand-- these beauties:

Popular for the fancy classes from the turn of the century right up into the 40s and 50s, the cement tiles had a good long time to develop a whole Palestine-wide fashion landscape, with different styles becoming popular in different cities, with everything from colour preference to motif becoming characteristic of a region, a family, or a home. This one, with its yellow, red, and green, round formations and flower edges, is typical of the Nablus area.

For the record: Cairo to Jerusalem by bus...

Still the cheapest way to travel (done right its about $80/£55 for a return trip, plus $40/£25 for the visa) Cairo by bus has gotten a little more complicated these days. 

Since the most problematic part of the journey was not knowing how things worked before hand, and thus not being able to plan very well, here is what I learned, for posterity (and for other hearty 
travellers). 

Active List(ening)

I've been complaining about not being able to find some sort of magical aggregator for all of the interesting audio tidbits that are popping up on the internet. Things that aren't podcasts, or youtube channels, or any of those other standard and locatable platforms.

Since I never have time to listen to things when I find them, and then spend hours looking for where I stashed the link, I'm just going to aggregate them all here on the new mainpage gadget, mostly so I can find them when I look.

** update!!** mainpage gadget hugely annoying to maintain, so, its been replaced by a tumbler feed.... stay tuned for updates!

Back to books! A teaser to Nasrallah's _Under the Midmorning Sun_

Tahṭa shams al-dụḥā (Under the Mid-morning Sun, 2004) is a novel about the writing of a play. Its one of my favourites in Ibrahim Nasrallah's Palestine Comedies series and has yet to be translated into English. 

When sourcing new books to read in Arabic, its always hard to know what to choose since getting all the way through is such an investment of time and energy. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the summaries of the Palestine Comedies I'm putting together for another project, as well as a few choice quotes. Thought it might be interesting or useful. Or just something to read on the internet. 

The narrative is set mainly in Ramallah, at the end of the first seven years of Palestinian Authority rule. It looks at the various ways of being Palestinian under the new political scene, and examines the problems of imposed narratives of nation-ness. 

Progress?

These are almost exactly a year overdue. Taken August 2012, its the belated latest on the "progress" of the construction of the wall being built on the lands of the village of Walaja and beyond.

I'll let the pictures do the talking, posted in reverse chronological order so the green beauty of the hills can stand solidly in our imaginations as the grey concrete grows.

The last post left off showing the hill where preliminary digging had begun. I'll start on that same hill and go from first walk to last.

August 2011, the Walaja hills. The orange marker center left had mapped out where the wall would go.

Change, in images...

So, in Egypt, they say there is a revolution going on. 

Sitting in a West Bank newsroom watching the start of that revolution, I don't know about anyone else, but when Mubarak stepped down, I was as much excited for Egypt as I was frustrated for Palestinians. I mean, its not like everyone in Palestine hasn't already taken to the streets en masse to demand their own change. Did Egypt have some secret? Some magic formula? Would they send it on over?

A year and a half after, at least from news reports, the Egyptian revolution started to take on a more familiar tone. It would be a long process of change, with nothing easy, and a tough road ahead where a lot of people would have to make a lot of decisions about what they wanted their community to look like.

So, heading on down to Cairo from Jerusalem, I was curious to see what it all looked like, felt like, smelled like. The one thing that was obvious, was that compared to the grim West Bank where rising cost of living, anger over feeling hamstrung between an occupation, an impotent government, and world system looking the other way was like an anvil being carried around by the sky, there was a certain exuberance in Egypt. (The soundtrack of the car ride down was just the beginning)

The best, best part, was the art. The walls on Muhammad Mahmoud street, had turned into a political forum. So I'll save the words and let the images do the talking. 

Day two: Police presence still strong post protests near the American Embassy, and at some point the night before the walls that had been covered with murals and graffiti were whitewashed. 

Even with the police around, some intrepid painters had already gotten at the fresh canvas.... and dared the police to paint over the walls again.

The things we build

I was at a book launch earlier in the week, for Arthur Neilson's In Your Eyes a Sandstorm, and of course question period focused less on the fascinating ins and outs of the book and his project of collecting Palestinian narratives, and more on "do you think we should be worried that Israel has nuclear weapons." 

Another comment (there were a lot more comments than questions, alas) was on some sociological ground of "removing threats perceived and real" with the idea that this would build trust and make peace possible. 

Then I thought, if I looked at the fences and walls and gates and doors separating Israelis from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, I'd start to imagine things were pretty scary on the other side too. 

I mean just look at it: