At the End of the day, a long hot and dustworn day in Cairo, when we had finally had something to eat, I thought it was about time to take a break, and so I went for a walk with the Flag, that undecipherable white flag with that hole in the centre, the enigma. It was a Friday night in Cairo and the streets were flooded with sober shining fat families and bunches of young men gliding like fish shoals in the sharp white lights from the leather and shoe shops, and I just wanted to cross that river of Nile coming from the Zamalek Island over the 6th of October Bridge, the older one with the dusty dim lamp lights and guarded by four huge stone lions, and into downtown. And so along I walked and well it went, despite all the warnings I had had before leaving Europe, the bunches of young men were laughing and crying, why is meaning? what is this flag? and why do you go? and where do you come from? the family fathers were smiling kindly and polite and even their wives took a short direct look at us, while the young girls all in couples and leaning shy and fat from screeching sweet cakes and ice cream, candy and lack of movement against the parapet turned their heads towards me and smiled and giggled behind my back as I passed, and so I took it just a little further, why not, down the road and out into the huge six or ten lane roundabout on Tahrir Square, and there once of a sudden I ran into the infamous Egyptian police, or rather, they ran into me, or to tell the truth a completely undistinguishable citizen, fattish and glistened, popped out of the millions and lay his sweaty hand on my arm and dragged me along whispering, come Mister, come speak to this police officer. And there in the middle of the stinking honking Cairo traffic stood two police cars, one black and one white, a dozen of police officers leaning upon them or just hanging around, and apparently there hadn't been money enough to equip them all with uniforms, black or white, so half of them were just wearing their own undistinguishable dusty and worn out clothes, and the uniformed ones stood up lazily but straight and greeted me, while the other poor fellows looked straight through me and each of them took out his mobile phone and called someone superior, some unseen Him. What is this? said the tallest, the most handsome and two starred officer in his glaring white marine-like uniform, what are you doing? and where do you come from? and why? He put his heavy hand on my shoulder and made me produce my aubergine-coloured passport, and ...
Well, yes, we had some trouble with the polices, sure we had, but it wasn't that bad and in the end (which wasn't really The End, but close enough) they let us go. Can we go? I said, really? Could it really be true? We were free to go? Yes, said the white officer with his black machine gun hanging silently down his back, yes. And I looked at the film crew and she smiled just like af free (wo)man, and so we decided to take it just a little further, why not, just a few hundred steps further too far down the crowded and wildly lit Tala'at Harb Street. And slowly I let go of the flag, it unfolded again and stood straight and white and enigmatic in the damp and dusty breeze as I walked through the crowd, all bewildered, stunned, but smiling, laughing. And so I finally reached the shabby Lotus Hotel, and that should have been the End, no reason whatever to go any further too far, oh, no, so why I proceeded, why any further, why cross even just one more square, my god, there are thousands of squares and meters ahead before you'd ever reach the End of this city and vanish into the desert, why? I don't know, but I did, at twenty to eleven on that Friday night in Cairo I crossed the Tala'at Harb Square and that, oh, that was The End ...
(But after ALL, someone, some body must be writing this, I must be here, somewhere, still exploiting my Freedom of Expression under the single dangling light bulb in a room with no windows (or maybe there are, right there, behind those heavy puke-yellow curtains covering the wall?) but for how long, yet?
Now every kind of Cairo police officers, white or black or undistinguishable, secret and above all, all the Unseen, have had my (cover) name spelled, letter by letter, over and over again by his subordinate mumbling directly into his ear or over the phone and deep into the dark of the night ...
Ingen kommentarer:
Send en kommentar