LAST CALL FOR MR. NIELSEN!

I woke up and I opened my eyes and I saw no difference, neither day nor night, and I knew that this was The End, hot and damp and yet I was freezing like a skinny old secretary bird and my stomach squeezed by the hand of the Big Unseen, and it wasn't the National Security, no, neither the white nor the black nor the plain-clothed and not even that Russian agent with plutonium in his take-away sushi, it was the good old plagues of Egypt that had finally counted me out as they had once counted the mission of he who came before me, of Niebuhr, from five down to the one and lonely, the eternal stranger, the I. – I ..., I whispered and that was all, my stomach was squeezed by a series of convulsions and finally went into a meltdown, but I wasn't able to move. And there I lay for years or days or minutes on end until finally the film crew gently knocked on my door, - I ..., I croaked or peeped, and in she came. She turned on the light. I looked like corpse. I was. – Weren't we supposed to ...? she said. – I ..., I whispered and shook my head. – Oh! she said.  She stepped onto my bed and dragged the dustheavy curtain aside and opened a small hidden cupboard and dragged out a dirty white towel wrapped around the hard disc containing the entire video recordings. – Maybe it is better that I bring it with me, she said, - in case they might show up. – But where would you ...? I mumbled. She had met a young Dane and now she would bring the hard disc to him and ask him to hide it in his suitcase and bring it out of Egypt. – And you ...? I said. – I'll manage. Do you want me to bring you something? – No, I said, - ... just water. She brought me a big bottle of water and left me in the darkness. And there I lay listening to the state of emergency, that strange Egyptian modus vivendi or modus moriendi, the sound of constant panic, thousands of cars unable to move, going and getting nowhere, the third world production of nothing but noise, exhaust fumes, garbage and uproar, le honk pour le honk, there is no future and you ain't getting nowhere, but there is this horn in your car, your freedom of speech, - I am! Here! I am! The millions of voices moving like bubbles in a boiling soup, the medieval bray of the fruit seller down in the passage going like a metronome through the sound of the twentieth century exploding into the twenty-first. I all the time I was waiting for the moment when they would finally knock on my door or just step right in and pick me up and do away with me. Why not? They had been following me, investigating my mission, they knew who and why and exactly where I was, there was only one thing left for them to do: close the casket. But why? I wasn't going nowhere now, finally I had turned into my own double lying as pale and white and still in my darkness as he in his. I was no good or bad or threat to neither them nor my contractors nor History nor humanity and the world. I didn't even mean anything. I was nothing, not even a sign to misinterpret. And so no one came. And outside, the state of Egyptian emergency slowly faded into a slumber, an indolent mumble that wasn't the end, but just the transition from Thursday into holy Friday. And when mullahs started weeping I crawled out of bed and into my grey suit, dragged my corpse down the corridor and into the elevator. The sleepy aging elevator boy held out his hand towards me and I looked into the open palm and it was dry and chapped, a landscape of narrow dirt roads, a story with no beginning and no end, and I shook my head and pressed the button and down I went. Outside in the Tala'at Harb Street the film crew was waiting for me. – Oh, Mercy! I mumbled and hailed a white cab and fell into it, - just take me away! – What? said the illiterate driver. – The airport! the film crew said and turned the camera on me. – Me? I mumbled. She nodded. – This is the end, I said, - and what have I done? Nothing. But at least I tried. I went as far as I could, didn't I? She nodded, and did her thumb up. – I went as far as I could and then even a little further, and everywhere I was stopped. But even then I kept on walking, didn't I. I failed and I failed and I failed and here we are and what have I done? – Great! she said. – What? I said. I was talking about world history, the clash of civilizations and the new world order. She thought about her film. – The history of the world is no film, I said, - not even a documentary. Or maybe it is. – Here we are and what is the outcome? I said, - lots of stories, but no change. Take a look, I said, - everything is exactly as it was. The supposed statue of the Prophet Muhammad is still in his box untouched and unseen by the peoples of Egypt. And the impossible walk that should have taken me, the twenty-first century Moses carrying the Flag of the Future, the law of a new world order through the land of Egypt, past the pyramids and into the light of a new desert dawn ... it all imploded into the darkness of room no. 5. Or maybe I'm wrong, I mumbled and looked out into the state of emergency, the long line of military complexes, fences, dust grey gardens and somewhere behind, the presidential palace, - maybe I actually went there, all the way through the Cairo, through History and Mankind and out on the other side, past the pyramids and into the desert, and this ..., I said, - is this just a dream?

At the check-in I collapsed. They kindly picked me up and placed me in an old wheel-chair and wheeled me all the way to the gate. There a man was waiting, plain-clothed. - I am the doctor, he said. He took my temperature, pulse, blood pressure, absorption of oxygen. Everything was too low. – I am afraid I have to keep you here, he said. – Here? I said, - in Egypt?! He nodded. – No, I said, - no! And then nothing. And then the sound of a voice from the PA: - Last call for Mr. Nielsen ...      

GO DOWN MOSES, GO ALL THE WAY DOWN!

This is no age for a prophet. Can't be. Or maybe it is just that I feel so alone. Back then, in the Age of Prophets, they were multiple, the one prophet was baptizing the other, it was like a Prophets League, they were fighting, denouncing and renouncing each other, the way from fisherman to fame was just one little step, one day you'd be the carpenters illegitimate child and the next day the son of God. I have a son, but no Father. I just wake up in the morning unseen and unwanted by the Egyptian peoples in the flea-crowded bed of the windowless Room no. 5. Un-called-for I get out of bed and put on my grey suit and tie and pick up my flag and knock on the door of the film crew and wait for her to get ready, and against all odds and the word and law of the Egyptian authorities I just go on walking the Flag of the New World Order, the Flag of Friendship, the Flag of Wonder, through Cairo. And for every step I take my way is getting heavier, step by step my legs are being filled up with lead, no doubt they have poisoned me, hired some Russian agent who behind my back or right in front of my face and gaze have filled my Foul-Felfela with plutonium, another heavy metal, heavier even than lead. But in spite of all that, in spite of ban, lead and plutonium I go on, I stand up and pick up my flag and go on walking on through the days and nights of this world, through suburbs suffocating in noise, garbage, human stools and exhaust fumes.  

Today we picked up the red thread of our history in the district of Shubra, or Rud El Farag, or maybe it was the El Wayli. In a seemingly nameless side alley of a side alley the film team took shelter in a gateway while I proceeded a few hundreds of meters down the alley. I stopped under the remains of a suffocated tree and pulled out the flag of my bag watched over by a sweaty unwashed young man leaning out of his window in a dirty-white sleeveless T-shirt smoking like the eternal image of the unemployed and lost generation of the world. His gaze was a misty blend of indifference, suspicion and loathing. I raised the flag and went out into the street and resumed the heroic walk through the land of Egypt, as always smiling, waving my free left hand and crying out "Salaam!" and "Alaam el-Sadaka!" But something had changed. Or maybe it was just the time of day or just this particular street. Three young men walking by, old crooked women in black, two young mothers, children, workers, everyone looked at me, but no one smiled, no one greeted me. They just looked. At the end of the alley I turned my head and saw a sudden crowd of men, young and grown-ups, dragging the film crew further into the darkness of the gateway. I stopped, and for a moment I just stood there, the flag hanging like a fainted law on its fishing rod, wondering what a prophet of the old age would do when one of his apostles was suddenly swallowed up by the angry mob. I wondered. And while I wondered time passed, and suddenly the film crew reappeared from the darkness of the gateway, no longer that young, on the contrary, older, blander than before. And behind her the mob of men had stopped in the gateway, hate hazing from their eyes. – They forced me to erase the recording, she said. – Who? I said looking at the men still looking at us, - are they some kind of plain-clothed agents? – No, she said, - I don't think so, it is just the people living here in this street. – But why? I said, - why?

Why would they stop us, why force us to erase the recordings of a stranger, but friendly smiling man walking a white flag through their street, if not out of fear. Not fear of us, of course, but fear of the ones who fear, the ever-present state, the plain-clothed agents oozing through the crowd of plain citizens. The supreme power of a police state is not the hundreds of thousands of white and black and sand-colored police officers, it is not the hundreds of thousands of plain-clothed agents of the National Security, no, the supreme power of the land of Egypt is the people itself having slowly been turned into and grown up to be their own secret agents, each citizen watching over himself and his neighbors and the casual strangers passing through his street, each citizen being his or her own censor, censuring himself and his neighbor and the casual stranger filming another stranger carrying an enigmatic but soft, white and innocent flag through the street.      

It was a blind alley, another dead end. But I had to go on. My legs were heavier than ever before. I reached the main road passing through the district of Rud El Farag, or El Wayli, or maybe it was the El Qubba, another countless-lane artery gray with pollution and noise, a roar of trucks and rustbodies stuck in this dead end of civilization. Behind the smog a low sun was sinking faintly orange into the horizon of garbage and ruins. Beyond hope or just comatose as I was, instead of crossing the main road, I just started walking down alongside it. And of course it was endless, a straight line drawn by an indifferent god and attended by thousands and thousands of the same huge greybrown concrete housing blocks. It was the straight line of hell: coming from nowhere and leading me nowhere. I walked along ruined concrete walls and sheet metal fences, a sudden withered garden grey from suffocating and dust. To my other side an endless procession of old trucks, excavators, load tractors and bulldozers had come to a permanent halt, their shovels resting heavy in the fainted garbage and dust. With every breath I took another part of my brain expired, my lungs and flag turning grey. At the end of a long crumbled concrete wall a gate suddenly opened into a huge yard. An old billboard showed fainted signs of car repair shop. Without hesitation, as if it was the gate to heaven suddenly and in the very last moment opening up to let me pass out of the old world, I entered, still carrying the flag. Just inside the gate a small group of people were gathered, dirt-poor, dressed in rags, but not like repair shop workers, rather like peasants, shepherds from the age of prophets. Jesus! I thought as I greeted them, - Salaam alekhem! and passed by them into paradise: It wasn't paradise, it wasn't even a car repair shop, it was a field, but a field without crops or grass, just a dark brown ground in the abyss between huge twenty store housing blocks. And on or in this dry brown piece of no man's land a small herd of scrawny cattle and sheep and goats was hovering, slowly turning their dead eyes towards me as I walked by and came to a halt in front of a wall. The End. Once again. From an opening in the building above me a man leaned out and cried something in that grating guttural voice of the Egyptian subordinate. I looked up, smiled, or at least tried to. – Alaam el-Sadaka, I mumbled. He spat. I turned around and looked at the small group of peasants or shepherds - three boys with shepherds sticks, a man and a women, an old crooked couple - still standing at the gate like a medieval painting looking at me. I waved my hand. They looked. From the gap in the building above me the man growled once again and spat. I turned to the cattle, the smogcolored sheep and the two goats standing in the dried ditch watching me without a sound. I raised my hand towards them and waved it, - Salaam, I mumbled, I am your prophet. And then I resumed walking, passed the small group of peasants, went through the gate and back out in hell.

THE AGE OF THE PROPHET

But you cannot stop us. Never. We are like water, like time, like History; you can try to hold us back, you might hold us back an entire night, but the next morning we will rise up again and go on walking!

I have come to the land of Egypt from that country in the far north, I have come to the land and the peoples of Egypt to prove, by the mere presence and shape of my body, that I, yes, I am the Prophet, the long-awaited, he who shall part the waters, he who shall separate the ones who say "welcome to Egypt!" from the ones who say "stop!" I have come to the land of Egypt to walk through the sea of people, to carry the Flag through the sea of the living and to separate the past from the future, I have come to you, peoples of Egypt, to give you the Law, the Law of the New World Order. See! the Flag is the law, the Flag that I bring with me and carry through your world, the Flag that parts the sea of peoples and separates the ones who say "welcome to Egypt!" from the ones who say "stop!", the ones who dare from the ones who fear, this Flag has come into the land of Egypt once and for all, and you cannot hold it back as you cannot hold me back, the Flag will carry me as I will carry the Flag through the world, through the sea of flesh and fear and ferocity, and thus as I walk I give you the Law, peoples of Egypt. And he who dares will read the Law and he who fears will try to stop me, to make the flag unseen like my double, the statue that lies unseen by the peoples of Egypt in his wooden casket in the airport of Cairo. He who fears will try and he will fail, cause as that statue is said to be a statue of the Prophet I am the mold of that statue, and thus I am the Prophet, I have come to your land, to the land of Egypt, and you cannot hold me back, oh, no, the night you hold me back is the night before the day I will rise up again and go on walking, go on parting the ones who dare from the ones who fear, go on giving the Law of the New World Order which is yet to be seen, to appear to the ones who dare see in that enigmatic circular hole in the Flag:

THE DIPLOMACY - AN INTERMISSION

- You need a producer, Myriam, the Lebanese beauty working at Darb, said last night at the vernissage. – A what? I said. – A local, someone who knows the city, speaks Arab, and knows how to deal with the police. She called Mahmoud and explained him my mission and passed me the phone. – It sounds interesting, he said, - and dangerous. At midnight we met him outside a cafe in a fairly dark side alley in Downtown. He was tall and skinny as a secretary bird with a crooked nose, big black-framed glasses, Rastafarian-hair and eyes hazy from that kind of smoke. – I have an idea, he said, - what you have to do is, you rent a car and we drive out into a peaceful area like Heliopolis, I know a street there, a street with almost no cars, no traffic, you take out your flag and drive down that street waving your flag through the open window of the car. – No, I said, - I walk, I don't drive. – Why not? he said. – Who do you think I am? I said, - the four-wheel-Moses?! – What about a boat then? he said, - we rent a boat and you sail down the river Nile, all the way through Cairo and down through the land of Egypt standing on the deck of the boat waving your flag! – No, I said. – I walk. Then he said no more. And then: - Okay, then you need a letter from your embassy saying that they know about you and your mission and approve of it, okay!

This morning we postponed any further action and walking and stepped right out of bed and into a taxi to the Danish Embassy on the Zamalek island. They took our cameras and bags and instead they gave us each a visitor's identity card to hang around our necks like medals of surrender. We were put to wait for five minutes (the consul was still in her morning conference with the ambassador) in a bare violently lit white room furnished with a table and four chairs apparently taken directly out of a Danish gymnasium of the 1980'ies, two Le Klint lamps and four colorful Andy Warhol poster versions of the fairy tale paper cuts of Hans Christian Andersen. Half an hour later the consul, a middle aged or rather elderly lady of the Hellerup 1950'ies appeared and led us to her office. And from here I, out of diplomatic reasons, have to shift into Danish, as the following might be considered unsuitable for non-Danish citizens:

- Vær så god at sætte jer, sagde konsulinden og satte sig bag skrivebordet og rejste sig og forsvandt ud ad døren og ned ad gangen og lod mig stirre på en orange appelsin, der lå blandt de grå ringbind og papirer på en hylde i reolen og kom tilbage og satte sig og sagde, - undskyld, vi har en frygtelig masse presserende sager i disse dage, hvad synes I om Cairo? – Jo, tak, sagde jeg, - her er jo ganske meget politi. – Ja, sagde konsulinden og så gennem vinduet ud over de vissengrønne trækroner og skoven af betonblokke, der bredte sig i formiddagssmoggen, - de vil gerne passe på os. – Jo, sagde jeg, - bestemt, men der er måske lige rigeligt med politi. – Det er nu engang sådan, de har valgt at have det her, sagde konsulinden. – Aha, sagde jeg. Vi så ud ad vinduet. – Jeg er først lige vendt tilbage til stillingen som konsul her for nogle få måneder siden, sagde konsulinden, - jeg kommer lige fra Pretoria, det er tredive år siden, jeg var her sidst, jeg kan næsten ikke kende byen igen, sukkede hun. – Ja, sagde jeg, - tiden går. – Ja, sukkede konsulinden, - men ægypterne er nu så søde, hvis I fortsætter bare hundrede meter ned ad gaden her og krydser den næste vej, så er der det dejligste kvarter med supermarkeder og en del små gallerier. – Tror De, ambassaden kan give os en form for brev, en konfirmation af, at ambassaden kender til vores mission her i Ægypten? – Vi vil på det bestemteste fraråde jer at vise det flag her i Ægypten, sagde konsulinden. – Det er desværre for sent, sagde jeg. – Vi kan ikke hjælpe jer, sagde konsulinden, - når først sikkerhedstjenesten har været inde over sagen, så kan ambassaden ikke gøre noget. – Hvad så? sagde jeg. – I er nødt til at indgive en ansøgning til de ægyptiske myndigheder om tilladelse til at filme, sagde konsulinden, - I får sikkert ikke noget svar. – Ha! sagde jeg, - herligt! – Ja ja, sagde konsulinden og så mig alvorligt i panden hen over kanten af sin brille, - men det er skam ikke bare af modvilje, det er også fordi ægypterne ikke kan få sig selv til at sige nej. – Den ægyptiske sikkerhedstjeneste?! sagde jeg. – Ægypterne har så utroligt svært ved at sige nej, sagde konsulinden. – Aha, sagde jeg, og, - aha. – Jamen så vil jeg ønske jer nogle gode dage her i Cairo, sagde konsulinden og rejste sig, - nu skal jeg følge jer ud, husk at aflevere jeres visitors cards nede i receptionen.  

AND NOW JUST THAT LITTLE FURTHER TOO FAR (The illegalized Walk - part 3)

But before we ever reach the hotel, the Brigadier is once again called by his supreme being, the Big Unseen, and once again the entire delegation of twenty-five police offers and secret agents and two Danish terrorists comes to a halt and the interrogation begins all over again: - First name! Second name! Third name! I start getting dizzy and the Brigadier kindly decides to jail us. He swiftly clears one of the street station shelters of street police officers and asks us to take over their plastic seats and even joins us together with the head of the black Central Security officers. And there we sit through the night watching the street life, citizens, tourists passing smiling and freely laughing by on their way home, and every second minute the Supreme Being calls, and once again we spell our names and the purpose of our being and the Brigadier once again tries and fails to spell this to his Supreme Unseen. - Who the hell is this? I ask the black Second Lieutenant. - It is like our CIA, you know? Yes, I know the CIA, a kind of shipping company, isn’t it, moving supposed terrorists (like us) from one part of the world to other, freer countries like Syria, Romania or Egypt, countries where you as a police officer enjoy a larger freedom, so to speak, to slap you clients (like us) under the feet, drown them, loosen their tongues through the use of electric chock etc. etc., - yes, I know the CIA, I say. And meanwhile the young film crew sits suspiciously restless in her plastic chair, trying to direct her young and tender chest aka the talisman camera towards the person speaking. – Oh please, turn of that thing now! I whisper, in Danish. I am tired now, and old, and hungry! – Please, I say, - can I have some water?! But there is no water in this provisional street corner jail, so at least they won't be able to perform the famous Egyptian water-torture on us. – I am sorry! says the Brigadier politely. But then I have an idea, after all this sheet metal shelter constitutes a kind of open jail, so – wouldn't You be so kind, Sir, to make one of your officers walk me just one hundred meters down that street, I say and point towards the Shara Mahmoud Basani, - to the small street vendor so that I can buy myself a bottle of water? The Brigadier looks bewildered at his black colleague. They have obviously never had such a question posed by a supposed terrorist. Impossible! But why? I am thirsty, I haven't had anything to drink for at least four hours? They look at each other. And two minutes later I walk down the close-to-deserted street between two police officers, one white and one black, and behind us the plain-clothed whispering Gollum. We enter the street vendor’s wildly lit two square meters, he jumps up and steps back into a wall of sweets as if facing a sudden invasion. I produce a five pound note and he hands me two large bottles of water which the polite white offers to carry. – La la! I say and commence the retreat, triumphantly, in the midst of my entourage. As we pass by a small still open bakers shop I even dare to step aside, and before my guards manage to stop me I have asked for two bread sticks. The rest of the night we spend seated in our provisional semi-open sheet metal shelter prison watching the last tourist and then the last citizen pass by. Finally we are alone, alone among Egyptian police officers. But at least we are on bread and water.

We gave up. Gave up the thought of a future. At last we just were, there, in that provisional jail, spelling our names and reason to be over and over again like a never-ending nightmare. Then once of a sudden the Brigadier turned of his cell-phone, - okay, you can go! – Why? I said, - where? – To your hotel, he said. – But your ... superior? I said and pointed at his mobile phone. – He says you can go, you are free, but, he said, - no more filming, and that flag... – The Flag of Friendship? I said. – Take it to your hotel room, said the Brigadier, - and keep it there, okay. – Okay, we said. And then the Brigadier called out a name, and out of the dark of the night the young shiny white Second Lieutenant reappeared. – Give them their passports, the Brigadier said. – Why? said the Second Lieutenant. – They are free.

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...     

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 ... )