BETWEEN THE ACTS - POISONED?

The last days I've felt so tired, for every step I take into the land of Egypt my legs are becoming heavier. As if they are slowly being filled up with lead. Each new morning I just long for darkness to fall, to give into that side alley and sit among the other regulars outside that shabby café and have my janzoon while contemplating the life in the street, the old shoe-shiner squatting among the garbage, the other old man taking care of the parking of cars, the light that is turned on, or off, in that high-ceilinged room on the first floor across the street. Am I becoming an Egyptian, fat, shabby and lazy, have they given me some poison? Who? They are following you, says Mr. M. Who? I say. Them, he says. Where? I say. Everywhere, they even followed you out here in Darb yesterday, I recognized two of them, they had come with you. They are investigating you. They know everything now, about the statue, about your flag, they don't like the things you are doing here in Egypt. But why? I say, I just want to be friendly, there is a hole in my flag, how can it hurt them? But what does it mean? says Mr. M. I don't know, It's just a piece of white cloth with a hole in. Yes, but what does it mean? They are following me, that is what it means. They don't like me, that is what it means. "They have to be punished, all of them!" said the security officer, says Mr. M. And I am so tired, every day I'm getting more and more tired, or paranoid, or beyond hope, or ... Nothing makes sense any more. Will we ever get access to that statue of that Prophet? Will he lie forever as a Pharao in his wooden casket in the nowhere-land of the customs? Will I ever fulfill my mission or will I be stuck in this boiling hell of a city for good, that is bad, that is worse, even worse. We have to go on! I say, and the film-crew just nods and does her happy thumbs-up behind the camera. Every day we have to show the flag! I say. Yeah! she nods. We are going nowhere and it doesn't make sense, but we just have to go, to show-up and walk just a little bit further, just one little street, through whatever remote outskirt, we just have to, I say, and it doesn't make sense and we are getting nowhere, but we have to! I say. Never give up! I say, if we give up, if we just sit down at some side-alley cafe and order a coffee and a pipe, then they have done us, turned us into Egyptians, into smoking mummies. I say.

They are following me. Everywhere. Even here. A few days ago they picked up a young guy down in Alexandria, they stopped him, dragged him of his scooter and into the police head quarters and kept him for the next three days. And when his family came to see him, they said they couldn't, but the family saw his scooter standing outside, and meanwhile, inside, they beat him up, again and again, and his eyes turned purple, and his skull and his skin, all purple, and they dragged out his nails, and when he suddenly turned out to be dead and they couldn't beat him back into life, oh, they panicked and threw him aka his corpse into a car and drove down to the channel and threw him into the water, and they called his family and said that, oh, by the way, the clothes of your son has been found at some place near the channel. And the next day the mortuary called and said that, oh, by the way, they had had a kind of son of that family delivered this morning.

But he was Egyptian. I am a foreigner, almost a tourist. They love tourists. "Welcome to Egypt!" they all cry out and smile. No, not all of them. Not the National Security. The plain-clothed don't smile. Never. That's the difference. I saw them that other night as they kept us and interrogated us for an entire holy Friday night. The police men smiled, even the black ones, the Central Security Forces. But not the plain-clothed, they didn't even look at me, not once. They weren't even fat, they seemed to be eaten up by hate, their eyes were deep purple, flickering, and they didn't have a voice, just a whisper, "they have to be punished, all of them". I think they have poisoned me, spit in my salad, my legs are slowly being filled up with lead, soon I won't be able to go any further, or to raise my arm with the flag. And then they've done me, then I'll be stuck in my filthy room no. 5 on the 6^th floor of this starless Hotel Lotus...