C
airo wasn’t made for winter, and despite itsoverall decrepitude, looks better beneath ablazing sun. Dark days reveal its weaknesses, theshadows of dirt, neglect and want. The worst iswhen it rains, which isn’t often but comes in winter,sometimes in torrents, for which nothing and no-oneis prepared. Pond-sized puddles ll the sewer-lessstreets. Rare is the roof that doesn’t leak and thetaxi with working windshield wipers. I reprimandeda cabbie and received a justiably dirty look. Whoneeds windshield wipers in the desert, lady? A manhas to eat, doesn’t he? As for the rain, it carries themurk of a grubby atmosphere, splotching clothingwith indelible grey marksand leaving a residualgrit where it touchesthe skin.Whereas heatmakes Northerntypes irritable, inCairo it’s the coldand damp that getson people’s nerves. Iwas at the pharmacy,one of those high-ceilinged old oneswith burnished woodcabinets and askson the shelves,when I was drawninto an excruciatingaltercation. The manin front of me at thecashier was clearly aworker coming off anight shift; he lookedtired, had no jacket.Over one arm hecarried a clean set of clothes wrapped inplastic; one hand helda 50-pound note andthe other his desiredpurchases: two sachetsof shampoo, a packet of moist towelettes and a plasticrazor, totalling around 18 Egyptian pounds ($3.30).The cashier asked for change but he didn’t have any – no-one ever does, especially cashiers.I’ve observed this particular cashier for sometime. Wry, tough, middle-aged, thick bodied,close-cropped curling grey-black hair, efcient,smart-seeming – and of remarkably indeterminategender. I’m not sure why I assumed that s/he wasan open and strong-minded individual, but I tendto idealize Egyptians, and this time I was wrong.The worker produced no change, just stood therewaiting for the situation to resolve itself, and thecashier started barking at him, mocking the paucityof his purchases and insisting he provide change,even though the 50 pounds in his hand probablyrepresented the whole of his fortune. The man tookthe upbraiding, whether zen or exhausted or soaccustomed to mistreatment that being gratuitouslyinsulted in public by someone who was meant toserve him was no big deal. Without apparent angeror impatience, he simply set the merchandise on thecounter in front of the cashier, made eye-contactwith him/her, and turned to leave.At this point, I rallied and told the cashier to stopshouting (though s/he already had) and tried to getthe man to come back. I would pay for his things, Itold the cashier and by god would have whateverchange I had coming to me. How dare s/he treat acustomer, especially a decent working man, this way?Everyone in the pharmacy was now giving me thatspecial look reserved for people who lose it in public.It’s part feigned apathy (since getting involved toosoon might spoil theshow), part horror-tinged mirth, partrapid assessment,as the tail end of thislook is a ick-of-the-eye interaction withthe others who arewatching. How far,everyone is thinking,will this particularnut go?In my brokenyet elegiac ArabicI proceeded to tellwhoever was listeningthat I’d frequentedthis pharmacy of late because of itsbeauty and old worldgraciousness. I seenow, I told them, thatit was only the décor,and that the peopleworking here were toomodern for mannersand kindness. I couldn’trecall the Arabic wordfor ‘disappointed’and ‘tortured’ cameout instead. ‘I am verytortured,’ I told them,and I’ll be damned if Iwasn’t crying. The cashier spluttered. Theman paused for a moment at the door, not becauseof me, but because of the rain. He put his plasticbundle on his head and moved on.Following his example, I placed my unpurchasedmerchandise on the counter and loped confusedlyout after him, thinking there must be somethingI could or should have done. He probably turnedsomewhere because I lost him, but the lookhe gave the cashier as he handed back histhings stayed with me. I think it was humility;a compliance born more of pity than rancour,reecting not weakness but clarity, a look so rareit nearly dees denition. But I tend to idealizeEgyptians and, again, I may be wrong.
Maria Golia
also writes for
The Middle East
, reviews for the
Times Literary Supplement
and is the author of the non-ction
Cairo, City of Sand
(Reaktion Books, 2004).
Cars vs bikes
Scots have long understoodthat it was Kilpatrick Macmillanwho was father of the modernbicycle and not Ernest Michaux asclaimed in ‘Pedal power’ (
SpecialFeature
,
Through Afghan eyes
,
NI 417
). His invention dates to1839 and was made of wood,which is interesting consideringyour piece on bamboo cycles.As a cyclist and motorist Ireally do feel that motorists geta bad press and some of theold, trite criticism comes outin this article. The car is hereto stay and we all need to getreal about that. The internalcombustion engine needs tobe ditched but please don’tknock the car and the motorist.It is simply not possible for usall to take to bicycles for all of our journeys; and they do notalways get us ‘quickly from Ato B’, for it depends on how farB is from A and how hilly theland in between, to say nothingof the tness of the cyclist. Trypedalling across some of ourhillier cities in heavy trafc ona rain-lashed day and you’ll seewhat I mean.Transporting oneself bybicycle in most British townsand cities is dangerous and inthe open countryside even moreso. There needs to be a seachange in attitudes towards pedalpower before more people willbe tempted to leave the car forshorter journeys, and this can onlybe initiated by governments.
W K Pryde
Newport-on-Tay, Scotland
No surprise
I was not surprised to see yourarticle on ‘Death camps in Kosovo’(
Currents
,
NI 417
) after readingGraham Hancock’s book
Lordsof Poverty
in which he exposesthe extremely high salaries,overgenerous perks, ofcials’jet-setting lifestyles, incompetentbureaucracy and misuse of fundsin the UN organization.
Charles Healey
Marlborough, England
Cuban commitment
Katherine Edyvane’s
Essay
onCuban medical superpower (
Tax Justice
,
NI 416
) has touched megreatly. Several years ago, at age59, I decided to join a Canadianbrigade of coffee harvesters in thehighlands of Nicaragua during thetime of the Contra attacks on astruggling Sandinista Government,while enduring a US boycott.The problem of getting fromA to B was never easy, due to thescarcity of petrol. Hitchhiking wastherefore condoned and one wasrarely left standing too long on theside of the road. On one occasionI was picked up by a large opentruck with one lonely individualon the back leaning againstthe cab. We quickly struck up aconversation and I soon learned Iwas chatting with a Cuban medicaldoctor who had been living in thisimpoverished Central Americancountry for several years. He hadbeen doing both clinical work andalso training Nicaraguans in theeld of medical practice. I was verymoved by this young man’s story.Here I was, only committingmyself to a mere two months of coffee picking and a few othermenial jobs requiring volunteers,while he was supporting for severalyears his Latin brothers and sisterswho were attempting to ght off the intrusions of a US-backedmilitary attempting to overthrow ademocratically elected government.
Rev Freddie Miller
Walcha, Australia
Nuclear clarity
Re: Joe Hanania’s letter in
NI 416
.The United States did not test anatomic device in secret a ‘full year’before the atomic strike againstHiroshima. The ‘Trinity’ test wasstaged on 16 July 1945 and theHiroshima attack occurred on 6August of that year. The test wasalso of an entirely different type of device than that employed againstHiroshima. The latter, thoughless efcient than the Trinity/Nagasaki device, was consideredby Manhattan Project scientistsunlikely to fail and thus was nottested before operational use. I feelthat global nuclear proliferation isan issue of particular seriousnessand, where possible, steps shouldbe taken to prevent inaccuraciesabout the history of nuclearweapons from entering the publicconsciousness, as it adds confusionto an already complex issue.
Zeb Leonard
Ballarat, Australia
Lingering trash
One thing is very clear from
Drowning in plastic
(
NI 415
) –to make ephemeral consumergoods and packaging intendedonly to be thrown away, out of materials that last almost foreveris completely crazy!
Susan Francis
Malvern, England
Toxic disregard
Whilst ‘This Toxic Life’ (
Keynote
,
Drowning in plastic
,
NI 415
) isinformative and shocking, I wasdismayed at the disregard foranimal experimentation issues.The so-called ‘safety testing’of chemicals involves theincarceration, force-feeding,injecting, burning and poisoningto death of hundreds of millionsof animals annually. An estimatedeight million additional animalswill be killed because of EU REACHlegislation, making this the biggestanimal testing programme ever.In addition to the appallingcruelty involved, animal-basedtoxicity testing cannot protectus from the harmful effects of chemicals because animal testsare fundamentally awed dueto species differences. Animalexperiments cannot predicthow a chemical will behave asit mixes with the soil, water,plants, microbes and animals;let alone how it will affect humanbeings in generations to come.By choosing the ‘right’ species,animal testers can provide‘evidence’ that any substanceis safe – beagle experimentswere used to argue that smokingdoes not cause lung cancer, for
Letter from Cairo
2
New INterNatIoNalIst DeCeMBer 2008
The views expressed on the letters page are not necessarily those of the
New Internationalist
.
Letters
The
New Internationalist
welcomes your letters. But please keep them short. They may beedited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to
letters@newint.org
or toyour local
NI
office. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Manners and the man
www.newint.org www.newint.org
example. Animal testing is merelya rubber-stamping exercise forthe chemical industry to gettheir products on the market. Itprovides them with protectionfrom litigation, but gives us noprotection from their dangerouschemicals.
Joanne Moodie
Southampton, England
Useful shit
Your edition on
Toilets
(
NI 414
)was a good one, but one-sided.Largely missing was the vitalimportance of retrieval and reuseof human excrement. Every ounceof living material removed froman area of land, for animal orhuman food (or for building orfuel) results in a depletion of soilnutrients which, if not replaced,will in time render the land barren.Consider the observation onpage 35 that Dhaka’s 12.6 millionpeople produce about 3,200 tonsof solid waste sewage daily. Inthe course of a year, this leads toroughly the following amounts of soil nutrients being taken fromproductive land in Bangladeshand dumped into the sea:10,512 tons nitrogen; 4,672 tonsphosphorus; 701 tons potassium;3,504 tons calcium; 584 tonsmagnesium; 584 tons sulphur;3,738 tons iron; 48 tonsmanganese; 164 tons zinc; 117tons copper; 23 tons boron; 3.5tons molybdenum.Note that urine, also high innutrients, is not considered here.Bringing in fertilizers toreplace this loss is not a long-termsolution, even if the people canafford it. Only nitrogen-basedfertilizer can be manufacturedwithout recourse to mining; allother nutrients must be mined, andin many cases the deposits will beexhausted in a few centuries.If we do not begin to focusmuch more seriously on returningall human excrement, and allother waste organic matter,to the soils from which theyoriginated, the eventual outcomewill be malnutrition and outrightstarvation, regardless of anation’s wealth, even if we werenot in the grip of global warmingand an increasing population.
Leon Holman
Hedley, Canada
New INterNatIoNalIst DeCeMBer 2008
3
I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y S A R A H J O H N
Queuing at the pharmacy becomes torture for
Maria
Golia
.
Correction
In our
Tax Justice
edition, theimage on page four comes fromMonrovia, Liberia and not fromFreetown as we stated.
Animal testing is merely a rubber-stamping exercise for the chemical industry...
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