Egypt memoirs by Moritz Poesch
You gotta specialize“, he says. „Yes“, my focus has become broad enough. Cairo university. It’s a shame. Bureaucracy. Five mornings wasted for one guy to pass the paper to the other who makes a stamp, so that then a third can sign, after he has made a one to two hour coffee break. Time wasted that could have been spent for studying. And a university library that does not allow the improvement of knowledge ‘cause it is poor. Willing and eager students, but misinformation wherever you go. Nothing changes. Bureaucracy has blocked the possibility for knowledge to pour in. “You should write all this down, so you won’t lose it”, he says. We are sitting in a small shisha and coffee place in one of the side streets of downtown. 11am. On the other side of the dusty, broken street is the foul and tameia stand where I just ate before. The small street behind café riche has sun already. Small green plastic chairs are placed along the wall of the house. Some men, some alone, some in pairs, dark jackets, sit peaceful, into the late mornings warm tranquility, smoking a bit, sipping some shai or coffee, whilst behind the buildings Cairo’s traffic streams along. The alleyway breathes dust. Badly maintained. Small. A tree is making his years in between the facade of what is left of the once splendorous, early 20th century apartment building, and the street and its metal garage doors. Shisha smoke. The guy with the coal, the other with coffee and shai, crossing the street, taking orders. Here they don’t have to shout as much, as the place is manageably small, almost cosy - lying here in the late morning hours. From the small tameia stand to the building wall with the green chairs it is roughly ten to fifteen meters. The fifty year old was sitting on the edge of the house, where the street goes in. Still thinking where to sit he invites me to sit with him. Where from? I answer. I guess he is Egyptian. Dark. Only the trousers, shoes, jacket, the gold rimmed glasses, the black hat might make him Afro-American. Sudanese. Professor. Writer. “The Egyptian society, what do you think.”The love for the pictures I got when I arrived comes up. Coming from the airport, the streets are full, the people, motorbikes, gestures, loudness, lights, screaming, fighting, enliven the space without questioning what - but just live. My flat mates don’t see the value of anarchy caused by self-disabling bureaucracy. Under-regulation I say is the freedom of the street, of life, of inspiration. Whilst at university they suffocate from unhelpful over-regulation. Quality management. I am reading on quality management. Every day. I have not found anything better, since my arrival. My bag, my shoes, my… everything Chinese; broke after a day, left me looking like a homeless whilst my lungs regorged the dirt and dust and waste gas of the streets. Made for 1mio cars, Cairo hosts 3mio. Noise, pollution, waste gas, dust, dead donkey in the Nile. On the way to Europe? Hussam laughs himself to death. My big fat flat mate. Service quality toward the student, the people… I will tell you a story. Of a country on the Nile. And when the donkeys hear about Europe, they jumped into the Nile and tried to swim.
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