IS THIS THE END?

This is the truth about Cairo Gate as told by Mr. M., director of the Culture Center, on a holy Friday:

"The problem is, you did not only send the statue to Egypt, you also sent the information boards and papers telling all those things about identity. And so the Egyptian customs had no choice but to call the National Security. And the National Security called me and asked me to come to their office in the airport, and I went there and they kept me there for two long days. But they didn't even once let me see the statue, because the statue was in the restricted zone, and on the morning of the first day the man from the National Security and that other man from the transportation company the two of them went in to look at the statue, and when they came out again the man from the National Security said nothing, but the man from the transportation company told me the statue was made of wax, and I said no, it is made of gyps. How do you know? the guy from the National Security said, - you haven't even seen it. No one here in Egypt outside the customs has seen it, so how do you know? And then he started to ask me all those questions and after some hours, when he was finished, he took me to his superior, an older guy, and it was he who asked all this about your country, - why do you want to take this thing into Egypt and to show it? he said, - you know where it comes from. - Yes. - From Denmark, he said, - from that country! - But it is a big country, I said, - not only three people. - They must be punished all of them! he said, - all of them! And then he said it was something related to our religion, an insult to Islam and the Egyptian people, - some satanism, he said, "satanism", and he told me that the statue was related to the Prophet Muhammad, and - they have to be punished all of them! And so on and so on and so on, and in the end he said, - okay, you can come and pick it up tomorrow. You want to come and pick it up tomorrow? - I'm sorry, I said, - but tomorrow I am going to Congo. And instead it was the guy from the transportation company who had to pick it up, but when he came the next morning, they said, - no, you cannot take it! And the guy from the National Security called me by the phone and said, - why do you want to take this thing into Egypt, it is too late, you'd better come out here and destroy it! - Well then, forget about it, I said", said Mr. M.  - Forget about it? I said and looked at him. Mr. M. looked very tired. - What do you mean "forget about it"?

But then his phone rang and the sound of it was some kind of Western metropolitan noise art as you'd hear it in Berlin and New York, and when he had finished the phone call I told him, and he said, - no it is not noise art, it's an African tribe performing in the desert of Nigeria. - Okay, I said, - forget about it.

But that was last Friday, and that is already ages ago, it is the truth told by another age, and meanwhile everything has happened and nothing has changed, all the bad and sad things have just turned worse and sader. I have been in the airport and tried to make the people form the transportation company take me to the customs and talk to the National Security and make them give me access to the statue to prove by the presence of my own body that it is the statue of me aka everyman and not the statue of the Prophet, unless I am the Prophet! But they wouldn't listen, they wouldn't even see me, so instead I took out my flag and walked it into the land of Egypt, into the night of Cairo, and there they stopped me and took my passport and interrogated me and in the end they forbid me to show the Flag of Friendship in Egypt. And while I walked away like a free man turned into a tourist they called Mr. M. again and once again told him to come to their office and kept him for another long day and told him to avoid me, and told him to cancel my performance, so now it is not only the supposed statue of the Prophet Mohammad and the Flag of Friendship that are forbidden, also I, my body, my appearance and my entire presence, skin and bones, have been banned from the public space in Egypt.

So how do you feel about it? Me? I say, - well, I feel like a banned book, a pariah, some thing that the Egyptians around me try not to look directly at, some thing they try to avoid while hoping that the thing is going to pass by, fast, and vanish into the thin air of the desert.

(And the supposed statue of the Prophet Muhammad? Is still lying in the darkness of his coffin in the nowhere land, the in-between, the undecided zone of the customs in the airport unseen by the Egyptian people. To release or return or destroy or just decide and decipher him I would have to bring Mr. M with me to the customs in the airport to sign an official paper that returns the responsibility for the statue from him, the addressee, to me, the sender and creator. But as Mr. M. has been told to avoid me this is obviously impossible. And so there is no future, no way to tell the story any further or to end it ... )