still wondering

Car alarm going off nearby in Istanbul, and a loud one.

And I’m still wondering: does anyone know of even one case where a car theft was prevented by such an alarm? If car alarms aren’t the most despicable invention of the past few decades…

unprecedented taxi ride (from June 1)

I hate it when I write posts and forget to post them. This was one I made from the Cairo Airport on June 1 right before beginning this trip, but I apparently forgot to click “publish.”

***

Flying out of Cairo at 7 PM means you’re guaranteed to face terrible rush hour traffic getting to the airport.

Today’s driver was a likable young guy who agreed to take me to the airport as long as I didn’t insist on cutting straight past Tahrir through Heliopolis on the direct route. Traffic that way was horrible today. I agreed with him.

So, we went in the exact opposite direction: west to the Pyramids, then circling south along the Ring Road. In terms of miles covered it was absurdly long, but I agree with the driver that it was probably the better option today in terms of time.

The Ring Road is a death trap, however. We saw one accident where a semi carrying diesel fuel had smashed into a car. Any drivers or passengers had long since been taken away from the scene, but it didn’t look good.

the grass is always browner on the other side

johneffay points out that exploited factory workers have it much tougher than I did when I said I was exhausted after walking around Venice for 3 or 4 days looking at art. Touché.

And here’s someone who had an even tougher row to hoe:

“Prisoner: Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia

From now on I was part of the ‘BUR.’ That is the Maximum Security Barrack for inveterate criminals, who are considered worse than scrap… We worked in a laundry, where we washed bloody linen, brought from the front: camouflage coats and forage caps. I’m sure that all these things would wash much better if rinsed in a river somewhere near the enemy lines. Why transport them for six months and four thousand kilometers, so we could wash them in cold water, and without soap? The only goal was probably mockery. To get 400 grams of bread we had to wash 300 pieces of bloody, linen dried into solid lumps or two thousand—yes, two thousand!—forage caps, or one hundred camouflage coats. For all of that we got one cap of liquid soap. The coats were particularly nightmarish. When wet, they became solid like iron plates, and one couldn’t get the dried blood out with an ax.”

Much harder than walking around an art show, for sure. My fatigue last night was pretty trivial by comparison with the horrors of the Gulag, no question.

None of us with liberty and enough food to eat should ever say that we are tired, hungry, ill, or unhappy. Others will always have it worse.

In the future I will try to emulate johneffay’s ascetic stoicism more closely.

a new health maxim

In the spirit of well-known rules of thumb such as “every cigarette takes 7 minutes off of your life,” I’m going to propose a new one: “every ferry ride in Istanbul adds 6 hours to your life.” Good for the lungs, good for the moods.

Usually it’s an early morning thing for me in Istanbul, but in some ways it’s even better at night, seeing the lights on the bridge go on if you do it exactly at dusk.

That’s what Istanbul has over Cairo: the sea. The Nile is an impressive river, don’t get me wrong. But it’s still a river, not the sea.

Khaled Said anniversary

I’m sorry to say it totally slipped my mind yesterday in Venice (if in Egypt it would have been impossible to miss): the one-year anniversary of Khaled Said’s death at the hands of the Alexandria police.

Here’s SOME VIDEO of yesterday’s protests.

As stated before on this blog, you could feel the change in the national mood last year after this horrible incident. It helped turn many fence-sitters against Mubarak, setting the stage for January 2011.

It wasn’t just the death itself, which one might normally write off as the act of a pair of rogue cops working without official direction. It was the fact that the police felt perfectly safe in beating him to death shamelessly on a public street in front of numerous witnesses, and the additional fact that the autopsy reports were an insult to the national intelligence.

the Istanbul art scene

As some readers of this blog may not know, Istanbul now has one of the world’s most thriving arts scenes, and has for some years. One person I know went out on a limb and called it the world’s very best. I don’t know enough to judge about that.

Our art curator Dean of Humanities in Cairo (Bruce Ferguson, who used to be Dean of the Arts at Columbia University) told me to go to RODEO GALLERY to get a first taste of the scene here, but I’m here a bit late in the day, and am not sure if they’re open into the evening. More likely I’ll just pop back up here for the Istanbul Biennale for a few days in the fall.

avoid eating European vegetables

Just received this from our university safety office:

“Until further notice, while you travel in Europe avoid:

1. eating raw tomatoes
2. eating fresh cucumbers
3. eating leafy salads”

Libya

I haven’t written about Libya in a long time because I’m increasingly dismayed by how it’s shaped up.

Back when Benghazi was about to get massacred, I was totally in favor of doing something. (And I thought the “we couldn’t know for sure that there would have been a massacre” reservations from some quarters were mostly bad-faith lazy rationalizations by those who think that reactively opposing the West on every issue is enough to constitute a political philosophy.) Then for awhile after that, I thought there was room for a little bit of hardball intervention to give Qaddafi one last push if the rebels were really in a position to take over, as long as the rebels were the main impetus and it wasn’t primarily a NATO attack.

But now, the way things are going seems both incompetent and sickening. Repeatedly bombing Qaddafi’s compound seems like nothing but glorified attempted murder. [ADDENDUM: I think it’s very different from bin Laden, who was leading a non-state criminal organization, essentially an upscale and much more dangerous mafia family; Qaddafi is a head of state, however bad, and I don’t see the justification for repeated attacks on his living quarters over many months in an undeclared war. “Success” in such an effort would be pretty revolting, wouldn’t it?]

I must admit that I scoffed after first reading Badiou’s “this is a Western intelligence plot” interpretation of the situation, but judging from the way things have gone, he may have a point. My friend from Benghazi also thinks so, even though she loathes Qaddafi as much as anyone I know.

In any case, it’s now a pretty disgusting conflict.

Istanbul

It’s hotter and sunnier here than in Venice, though the Sultanahmet neighborhood is blessed with a cool sea breeze, unlike the airport area.

I’m in the same hotel as last week, but they didn’t give me Barbie’s room this time. That really must have been either just a fluke or an outright mistake on someone’s part. Last week’s room should have cost about 3-4 times what I paid for it; this one is more right on target for what I’d expect to get at this price in this neighborhood.

Not a bad view even now, though. A tiny bit of the Blue Mosque, and a fair amount of sea view.

*120* Syrian security killed?

And that’s just how many the government is admitting. HERE.

They’re in a lot more trouble than I thought they would be. Syria would have been right behind Saudi Arabia on my list of Middle East regimes least likely to fall.

Strange place, Syria. It does feel generally oppressive and paranoid, or did in 2002 when I was there. But at the same time, the people are very nice and it’s a great place to see. And man, is it cheap. Furthermore, if you like sweets and steam baths, it’s the place for you (and I like both). Syria has the world’s best candies and desserts, in my opinion.

The standard reaction from many Western people is that they like Aleppo the best. I’m in the pro-Damascus minority, myself.