Tuesday, March 1, 2011

New Cairo

I walked off of my flight from Istanbul to Cairo and I could almost touch the intangible but wholly present change in Egypt. Maybe it was just my sheer excitement to be here, or the indelible faith I have in the revolution in Egypt and in Egyptian people and thus my inclination and biased to feel this change. Then again it could have been the brand new, shiny Cairo Airport terminal I flew into that is nicer than most of the terminals at JFK. Yet driving from the airport to Sarah's apartment in Masr Gedida truly the city feels brighter, more alive (if that's possible), almost in a sense lighter without the omnipotent presence of the oppressive and patronizing dictator. I swear I can see it in people's faces, the pride and the restored dignity. It's almost as if people feel more like themselves, or the people they always believed each other to be. I hope this is in part because they know that they have truly inspired and indeed changed the world. If not, I hope I can assure anyone I meet that this is very much the case.

New Cairo...like New York. I can't get over how much the two remind me of one another. I think living in New York City these past two years has only made me fall more in love with Cairo this time around. I have grown to love and appreciate so much a kind of functioning madness, the sound of car horns honking in some sort of secret language, the colorful bright borderline obnoxious lights of storefronts, the blur of taxis speeding down the road and the never-ending game of trying not to get hit by one. These are just some of the shared oddly beloved traits of New York and Cairo. And I think now, this New Cairo post-Jan25 has the vibrancy of creativity, the palpable thirst for new ideas and change, and the undeniable strength of human spirit that sometimes we forget to embrace or fail to appreciate elsewhere in the world.

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