Umpublished entries I wrote in the last days in Cairo!
~Here they are...the whispers of a slow growing despair expressed in the last words I wrote in Cairo, at my home in Zamalek while hearing people´s protesting in the streets, the strong roar of Army airplanes passing by my roof and gun shots.
These were my words to myself, to my dear Egypt, to GOD.
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Cairo, the 1st of February, 2011
Standing by...
Still the uncertain future for our country. The worst thing to deal with, for me, it’s this “stand by” situation where nothing moves forward.
The portuguese embassy, following the example of other embassies which already provided free flights for their nationality fellows, is trying to arrange for an airplane to take us to Portugal tomorrow.
Leaving the country gives me a mixed feeling sensation. For one side, I would feel more useful in Portugal until the country goes back to its tracks (or, Inshah Allah, for BETTER tracks) and I would appease my family and friend´s generalized panic instead of being locked up at home or not being able to demonstrate in the streets along with my fellow egyptians. I feel useless and frustrated right now, locked at home with no idea of what will come or when we’ll go back to work and return to our lives.
Immobility and restraint from freedom, more than anything else, make me feel very nervous and frustrated.
Not being able to go about my life and doing all the things I love to do and work, enjoy life, simply walking with no fear in the streets is REALLY freaking me out.
Never in my life did I understand this deeply the meaning and VALUE of PEACE and FREEDOM.
NOW I DO.
From another point of view, I feel deeply sad for leaving Egypt now as it seems I am abandoning my homeland. Strange, nostalgic, cruel feeling. I don´t wish it upon anyone.
An unusual number of portuguese journalists called during these days. They want to interview me.
Uh! Funny, isn’t it? I’ve done so much great work here in Cairo and around the world for about 5 years and I do give interviews to portuguese journalists but this is the first time I receive requests for several interviews (radio and newspapers) within the last three days. War and chaos sells much more than ART, CREATION and VICTORIES, doesn’t it? It seems so...
If everything goes according to plan, we will fly back to Portugal tomorrow afternoon and, even if we do, it will be the saddest flight of my life. Leaving Egypt right now pains me deeply and all I wish is that all turns around for the better and I can return safely to a happier country with a new sense of PEACE and PROSPERITY. After all, this is also MY COUNTRY and, by travelling now, I am leaving behind my own home, some very dear friends and people I love, my work and musicians, my beloved Sweetie and Kenzi (my cats) and lots of things that became important to me.
Life is REALLY unexpected! Oh, LORD! No matter how much we try to organize it, guess how it will go and develop, events take their own toll without asking permission from anyone or giving any hints about their intentions. Who would guess egyptian men would have to defend their homes with their own hands, spending nights patrolling the streets because there’s a Revolution going on and all the police was retreated from the streets to install further chaos?!
Who would know that there would be a REVOLUTION in Egypt, all of a sudden (although it had built up for the last 30 years of hard life for egyptians)?!
The iconic sentence “ CARPE DIEM” never made more sense than now. We really ONLY have the NOW to live with. Nothing is certain, everything changes and takes its course, independenty of our wishes.
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Cairo, the 30th January, 2011
Notes from the Revolution
What’s happening in Egypt since the 25th January is a matter much bigger than myself, my own personal opinions and dramas. This is BIG. As a resident, as an artist who lives and works in this country with egyptians and for egyptians, I feel proud – for the first – time to see this people taking a brave act towards the dignity and prosperity of their country.
For the first time, I saw courageous men and women taking the streets and not being afraid of risk their lives for the future of their country. I feel Egypt as my own country so it’s only natural that I also hope for the best to come.
Facing this MAJOR changes in Egypt, country that is already mine, takes me away from my own personal goals and worries and gives me a different perspective on Life as a much bigger thing than my own reduced personal world.
Yet...there are some personal notes on the Revolution that I consider kind of funny as I observe myself and the way I am coping with all the shock, immobility, unstability and chaos.
Here’s the funny behaviours I am developing in order not to freak out completely in the midst of this Revolution:
Keeping in touch with family and friends from all over the world that are reaching for me, more worried than me about the whole situation;
Doing my yoga practices at home, on my pink yoga mat with the small knowledge I have of the subject and always with a pink burning candle in front of me. This practice keeps my mind clear, calm and controlled;
Writing these “Revolution” notes – which I only started writing today – in order to be able to retreat myself from the problem and see it unfold, at least for a while, through the eyes of the OBSERVER I also am;
Watching the news with my friend/neighbour who has been at my home for long periods of time. We catch up on the news, mutual frustrations and aspirations for the country and for us. We also eat cookies and have some girlie chats that I would never waste my time having in ordinary circumnstances;
I – try – to read as much as I can (concentration levels are not at their best right now) and finish fous books that I started reading at the same time;
I burn candles, incense and aromatic oils at home. I don’t even feel them anymore but I imagine my home must smell like a church from miles away;
I keep the house clean and neat. I organized my dancing dresses and material, I deeply cleaned the windows with loads of water and I bath more often than usual (?!). I guess that every process of DEATH requires a sub-consequent purification ritual. For me, that starts with my mind, home, body and dance material.
I breath deeper and calmer than ever and think: “What can I do if not go with the flow?!”;
I also seem to have a recurrent thought in my mind ALL the time. An inside voice saying in a kind of a harsh way:
“Do not procrastinate. Don’t leave for after what you can do NOW”.
I hope all this chaos will be appeased and solved as soon as possible and we’re all back to our lives, working and walking free in the streets of Cairo with no fear and with a NEW HOPE for a better future.
I hope...
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Cairo, the 30th January, 2011
Developments of today...
Strange things:
How strangely liberating it was simply to walk down the 26th of July street in Zamalek this morning. My legs were not doing their usual “walk” but flying...
To breath, see the birds and the sun, some men in the street with added cortesy and attentive tenderness as if protecting me when I passed by, a general mood of aprehension yet peace, in midst of all this chaos.
Most supermarkets and shops are closed and heavily sealed. I managed to find an open grocery, a small place with cigarettes, envelopes for letters, water and cookies.
I got my letter envelopes (don’t know why!), some bottles of water and a pack of egyptian, heavily artificial cookies.
As I left the place, I couldn’t resist on getting my February issue of “Vanity Fair” and the seller (an old man always in smiling mode) joked with me. We laughed together and, for some seconds, the world was back in order and perfect joy. Smiling and joking in the middle of crisis were assets I got/learnt from egyptians. I am a good student!
In a sudden "diva" attack, I hoped to find my “moccha cafe” usual shop open. No such luck!
Call it “craziness” but I try to keep some normality within this generalized chaos.
I even prepared myself to attend my yoga class at 7.00 a.m. The teacher didn’t come, though... Am I against the tide, as usual?
Most people are afraid. I don’t feel afraid for NOW. I feel frustrated with all this immobility, criminality and chaos that arose from an initially rightful manifestation for human rights in Egypt.
I feel frustrated because people are fighting between each other, instead of producing GOOD things for this country we all love and wish to see growing and prosperous on every level.
I feel frustrated that connections are cut or severely damaged (internet is not working for three days now and mobile phones go on and off network functioning) and no one knows what to, where we will go, what will happen next.
The country is delivered to criminals (in what, it seems, was a very low level strategy from the Government to shift people’s attention and presence from the street manifestations to their neighbourhoods where they were protecting their houses and families during the whole last night due to the police disappearance from the city). This has not been proven though. There are different versions of the story and the truth became foggier it than ever was.
Everyone is asking: “ Where is the police?!”
Several prisons registered a strangely coincident general escape from prisoners and Government allegates that this happened because most police force is being used to control the manifestations and disturbs that came with it.
This created a bigger chaos and but it didn´t stop protests. The supposed low tactic to re-direct people´s atention to the defense of their homes doesn´t seem to be working because egyptian people did not shut up and keep on fighting for their rights in the streets, specially in Tahrir Square.
Airplanes very close to the ground are heard throughout the city. I guess this is another way of trying to intimidate people and keep them at home.
Egyptian people, though, seem to be braver than ever and that gives me a sense of pride in their strenght that I never had before.
I’m receiving phone calls from friends spread all over the world, concerned about what’s happening.
At the same time, I am strangely calm cause there’s so little in my hands to solve. No one knows what will happen in the next few hours, much less in the forsight future.
No one has any idea of how to recover from all this chaos and get President Mubarak to abdicate from his presidency and, if he does, what will fill the void that he will leave and return PEACE, ORDER and PRODUCTIVITY to this country.
No one knows.
I don’t even feel like traveling and leaving Egypt right now. This is, after all, my second home (or, perhaps, the first) and the place where my last year’s of struggle, victories and LIFE has occurred. Yet it frustrates me to be stuck at home with no work, no connection to the outside world except through television and some sparse mobile connection and DOING NOTHING.
My mum tells me to read!
Yes, I try. I am always reading but not in the middle of this chaos with no sense of what will come next...
I plan to do some serious yoga practice after a while, just to keep me calm and mentally sane and yes, I plan to read a bit and folllow the news.
What else can I do???
I even thought about offering Dance classes to the women in my neighbourhood to keep us busy, united and joyful in the middle of all this tension but I reflected on it: who would be in the mood to dance right now?! Everyone would presume I am crazy beyond the extraordinary borders of current generalized craziness...or not. I don´t know.
Frustrating is the word of the day.
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Cairo, the 30th January, 2011
Egypt’s Revolution
No one saw it coming (or did we?!). Egyptian typical apathy and ability to surround limitations (hence the generalized dishonesty and corruption) didn’t announce what was coming to this country from a few days ago.
The interesting thing is that I always took PEACE for granted and even commented with one of my employees that the best thing about Egypt was its peace and the smooth, peaceful way of most egyptians. I made this remark about 10 days ago. How ironic!
Egypt has presented me ALL kinds of challenges. I often feel this was an experience (kinf of sadistic one, I may add) God planned to play on me. I was sent to a country where ALL my beliefs, “for sures” and values were put to the text to an extreme.
I have almost lost my life here, I have faced personal and professional challenges (I call them “challenges”, others may call them “tragedies” or simply “ remarkable obstacles”) that very few would be able to deal with and I remained the same BUT with a wider mind, heart and soul (I hope).
You see...there’s this thing about living as a single foreign woman dancer in Egypt: it breaks you and drops you on the gutter or it makes you so strong that no tempest or hurricane of any kind would shake your bases.
Now what do we have here?!
I am not writing anymore about a personal quest of mine. This is something bigger than my own, little, limited personal world. We are talking about an EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION that, by now, has been taken the lives of many innocent people, has been destroying public and private property, blocking the whole country’s functioning and instilling a generalized sense of terror all around Cairo.
Personal matters and delicate emotional wounds seem to vanish into void, right now. There’s a REAL, most urgente matter to focus on: PEACE. And what will happen to Egypt and to the lives of egyptians and everyone who lives here (like me), works and pays his/her taxes, has his/her home and career, his/her life!
What will come next?
Predisent Mubarak doesn’t seem to abdicate from this “throne” and, due to that and provoked disturbs all over the country, LIFE never seemed more umpredictable than now.
I never thought that simply going to the street to buy your piece of bread could be such a privilege. Until now.
New’s reports say that thousands of prisoners escaped from a specific prison in Cairo due to police shortage protecting it and they are attacking, robbing, vandalizing the whole city.
The POLICE itself disappeared from the streets. No protection whatsoever from anything or anyone. Not a single police man around totally vulnerable neighborhoods and, it seems, some Army cars in strategic spots of the city. That’s all.
This seems like a strategy to create chaos in Egypt and avoid further demonstrations by keeping people busy protecting their homes, families and properties.
Men from the whole city gathered yesterday night in human chains of protection of their neighbourhoods. Civils are doing the job of police and police disappeared.
This should sound absurd to me but, by now, egyptian life has taken its toll on me and not even the biggest absurd fact in this world would seem strange to me.
I was advised by family, friends, neighbours and the journalists on television to avoid, at all costs, going into the street so I remained at home yesterday in an imposed retreat that felt like one year domicile emprisonment.
The internet connection is still not working and the mobile network’s failing. All life is STOPPED, its breath is becoming stale with antecipation and immobility. “What will come next?”
People want President Hosny Mubarak out and immediate DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS. IT´s their right to want so.
Yet the demonstrations which started being diplomatic and led by educated, politically counscient people, became a dangerous mix of rightful, decent fighters for freedom , justice and a true democratic system and thugs, criminals, vandalism, thieves, etc.
Even the “National Egyptian Museum” was attacked by vandals and several other shops, private homes and Government buildings. This is not the good egyptian people I know, though...
Things have gone totally out of hand and the question in everyone’s head is” What’s next?”
No country can hold itself without producing, working, functioning in every level. Banks are closed as most of the offices and shops.
I went to the street this morning in Zamalek and found a little ghost city in what was a lively commercial zone. Mostly men in the street smiling at me, still throwing sexual remarks or simply saying I am beautiful. Even in the middle of this huge chaos, egyptian men stick to their guns (literally speaking).:)
My work has been canceled on all levels and no one knows when it will return to LIFE.
Now I truly understand the MEANING and VALUE of PEACE. The luxury of simply going to the street and work, produce something valuable through your work, shop for the fridge, meet some friends, go to the cinema, take a coffee with a loved one, etc. All those simple, apparently ordinary gestures I once took for granted are now put to the test and taken away. Simply taken away.
Men’s faces in the street – as I saw them this morning- are half defiant and half afraid. Afraid for their future and their family’s future, not for their own safety. In this aspect, egyptian men have surprised me in the courageous way they have fought until now, risking their own lives in order to make a significant CHANGE in a country which is dying, little by little due to a regime that has been on for more than 30 years and has put CORRUPTION, DICTATORSHIP and SOCIAL INJUSTICE in the order of the day.
People are tired of extreme poverty and no hope for a better tomorrow. I hope for the same for myself and all my fellow egyptians.
And how did I get caught up in all this?!
As egyptians would say, if they would not be busy defending their homes from thugs right now, “NASIBI!” (MY DESTINY).
