tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4163876234969175446.post7903974788829046333..comments2023-11-05T10:39:59.374+02:00Comments on Land and People: CairoRami Zuraykhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14644937988631864952noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4163876234969175446.post-3446960853046358392008-11-08T02:32:00.000+02:002008-11-08T02:32:00.000+02:00your cliche story was anything but! I enjoyed your...your cliche story was anything but! I enjoyed your story on your nothing-to-report time in Cairo, and your witty question to the taxi driver on the richness of God....northshorewomanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07390144327668656601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4163876234969175446.post-74219644604997812532008-11-06T19:12:00.000+02:002008-11-06T19:12:00.000+02:00I lived in Cairo among upper class, Western educat...I lived in Cairo among upper class, Western educated Egyptians, and married a man of approximately my class background although his mother thought her family better than mine. We got a lot of our information from the house servants... It's very difficult not to behave like a Western reporter. One meets the taxi driver and the man who serves tea so one converses with him. Else one meets the AUC graduate with the MBA, the Mercedes, the subsidized apartment inherited from his late father the Cabinet minister, the cushy job with an AID consultancy.<BR/><BR/>Aren't you friends with Issandr al Imrani? He is a good reporter and has good contacts.<BR/><BR/>When I arrived in Damascus for the first time last month, and stood in the crowd on Thawra STreet next to Bab al-Jabiyeh, I felt immediately at home, because of my year in Cairo; and I felt much more comfortable and safe. Damascus is better organized, less crowded, and the people on the street were incredibly polite to me. Had I stood for ten or fifteen minutes on a similar street in Tahrir SQuare I would have been pushed, insulted or accosted in some manner. I don't quite understand why Damascus is so much calmer than Cairo, unless it's just that there are far too many people in Cairo and have been for two generations.<BR/><BR/>What I found most attractive about Damascus, oddly, was the mid-20th-century office buildings and streets at the edge of the old city, which remind me of the generation of our fathers, who built new quarters and installed offices for agriculture, education, commerce and industry; they had such hope and such pride. They were going to build great new societies for the benefit of our people. The old lobbies and sidewalks and offices remind me of those promises... And yes, in Cairo it's all broken. I lived there in 1983 and we scratched our heads at how everything was always broken...Leila Abu-Sabahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14161833022292457787noreply@blogger.com