I like that title. It is what I have been wanting to go back to from the moment on that I left Cairo. It brings to mind images of Che Guevara, the Bastille or other revolutions. But the Egyptians have their own way of remembering their communal achievement, the ousting of Hosni Mubarak as their president and starting a path towards a more democratic government.

Being back in Cairo one asks the question  ‘what has changed?’. Obviously many things have changed since the revolution, but in the daily life the matter is slightly more complicated. I have met people who are not happy with the revolution. ‘Mubarak is a good man’ is what i get to hear sometimes. More down south (Upper Egypt)  there is still a lot of support for him. In Cairo however, after all the main stage of the revolution, there is luckily a more positive spirit, but also frustration about the pace and contents of the reforms. To such an extent even that last week Friday a new ‘Day of Anger’ was called for, and indeed a hundred thousand people came to the famous Tahrir square to reassert their demands for a democratic country.

A hundred thousand people in Tahrir is a sight that was not seen ever since the Revolution, but the thrust of those days is gone. There is no common goal anymore to unite all Egyptians for one cause. The question now is how to implement changes. Every day new political parties are founded, and discussions about the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis are popular, either in favour or in fear of both. And that is immediately the first big difference here in Cairo after the Revolution. Politics is very much ‘salonfähig” again. I don’t know if I can use that word in English, but it is exactly that. In cafés, on the street, in taxis, everywhere people talk about politics. That does not mean that people avoided the subject before the revolution, but it is a big difference talking about a inert regime, or about the many possibilities of the future.

Among my friends here there is an agreement that the Muslim Brotherhood (or worse: the ‘Salafis’) should not get a majority in the parliament, because it will mean a serious threat for their lifestyle. These friends are not representative for the whole of Egypt, but indeed were very active in the revolution and want to see changes they have been demonstrating for, and not a so-called step backwards. This fear is logic and nothing wrong with. But the question is, if you allow pure democratic elections, and the majority of the votes go to a party that wants to implement Islamic legislature (I am not saying that this will happen), then democracy is doing her work. Or not? Can people allow non-democratic movements to be elected through a democratic system?

Besides the obvious political changes here in Egypt, there are some more practical changes as well. The curfew is still in place, even though I have ‘defied’ it already many times. Admittedly, places tend to close down a bit before the curfew, giving you the opportunity to be home before the curfew officially starts. But other places don’t. The curfew is from 2am to 5am, so it doesn’t bother me too much. Either I go back home before 2 and have a good night sleep, or I extend my stay with friends just a few hours extra to catch the first metro at 6am. So the curfew is there, but not as strictly as during the revolution (3pm to 8am!).

Another change is the disappearance of metro station ‘Mubarak’. There is a new station however ‘Shuhadaa’, ‘Martyrs’. I think this is more than fair.

The last change is one that I will go deeper into the next blog. People are proud of their revolution, whether it brings what they want or not, and whether they have the patience to wait for it. Numerous stands around the city sell flags and memorabilia. Not only from the Egyptian revolution, but basically of all Arabic countries currently rising up to demand political changes. Next to that, all Egyptian singers came up with at least one revolutionary (or nationalistic) song. And last but not least, around the city beautiful portraits appeared of the people who had to give their lives for the revolution. Cairo remembers their martyrs in a beautiful way.

After the first post you know more or less in what kind of neighbourhood I live: Maadi. However, this is about to change, as me and one of my flatmates Wassie are moving to a flat in Doqqi, on the other side of the Nile and much closer to Downtown. We are to move in on or before the 1^st of November so around that time I will tell more about the new environment. Also, I enrolled in a nice evening course of Egyptian colloquial Arabic, just to get some systematical attention to my language skills. The lessons are twice a week, on Sunday and Tuesday evening. I am enjoying it already!

This post I want to take some time to tell something about my work. I came to Cairo basically to improve my Arabic and to prepare for the minor program at the Dutch Institute at Zamalek. To fill my time I wanted to do an internship and found a place at an Egyptian NGO. They are committed to development work in and outside Cairo and work in many fields, ranging from women empowerment, preventing child labour, offer vocational training to people to improve their economic position, to implementing better sanitary and there is even an organic farming project, which yielded 5000 KG of peanuts recently!

As my Arabic is not even near sufficient to give a workshop or something like that, I mainly work at the office in Cairo, working on a new website (the current one is outdated), maintaining contacts with an international organization for solidarity tourism and do some little tasks at the spot (even some translation, but mainly checking of English texts). I go to work four days per week, giving me a three day weekend to go on little trips, or just to focus on my Arabic and other stuff. It’s a good balance.

To get to work (and back) is a new adventure every day, even though I am slowly getting the hang of it. The first part is a walk to the metro. This takes about 10 minutes, and after a few weeks, you recognize people and the good thing is: they recognize you! So somewhere halfway there is a sheikh-type of man, smoking sheesha probably the whole day, who nods at me and wishes me a grumpy ‘Sabah al-kheer’ (Morning of the Good), to which I then reply with the standard ‘Sabah an-Nour’ (Morning of the Light). This is the most common greeting, but variations are possible, like ‘Morning of the Rainbow’, ‘Morning of Beans’ and ‘Morning of the Cream’. I like Arabic [when I was verifying this, even better ones showed up, like ‘Morning of Sleep’, ‘Morning of Roses’ etc etc. Including a lot of people writing exactly this on their blogs, with a final remark like ‘I like Arabic’… I can’t be original always.]

Then I get to the metro station ‘Hadayek al Maadi’. For the better part of the metro, it’s not a real metro, as the trains don’t go underground. At every station there are two walking bridges, one inside the gates (to get to the other platform) and one outside the gates, just for every person who wants to get to the other side of the tracks. Unfortunately, in Hadayek al Maadi, the inner one collapsed, forcing everybody to choose where you want to enter the metro. I need to go the other side, so I have to take this bridge first, then walk a bit back and then go into the metro there. Entrance: 1 pound (12,5 eurocent). I can go out the second stop already. After Dar as-Salam comes my stop: Zahraa. When the metro is busy you’ll have trouble getting in the metro, but no troubles getting out: sometimes you just get pushed out if you’re the one standing closest to the doors.

At Zahraa, I am making  a small walk of about 5 minutes to position myself strategically to get a minibus. After waiting for half an hour in a wrong spot at my second day (the first day I took a taxi), I learned my lesson. On the right spot, you just have to wait for the first minibus that has space for you, and most of the times that is easily within 10 minutes. Once in the minibus, it’s only 5 minutes or so before I can get out again (insha’allah the driver understands where I want to get out, otherwise I have to walk to the right place). Minibus charges 50 piastres (6 cents). Et voila, I am at the entrance of the compound that is called ‘New Fustat City’, named after the old capital of Fustat. A 5 minute walk brings me to the well-deserved airconditioned working space. After greeting my colleagues with some Arabic, I install myself to get working.

When the day is over, and I need to get to home, the whole process as described above, takes place again but in reversed order. The only problem is that I haven’t found a strategic place yet to get back to Zahraa. There are at least three different directions in which the minibuses go, and I have to get into the right one. Luckily, I am never alone waiting for a minibus, so advice is easy to get from my fellow commuters.

Next time: Doqqi and maybe some more about my working day (because there is much more than just getting there and away).

So three years after laying my hands on my precious url, the time has come to make use of it. Being in Cairo for quite some time from now makes easy access to my whereabouts necessary. If only to reassure people whose last look on their face didn’t reveal much hope I was coming back.

No worries at all, Cairo is a great city, though sometimes it might take some more energy than the average European city. But the good sides are also nice. I think my ‘blog’ (though I hate to say I am keeping  a blog) will rather contain interesting stories, comments on what is happening and other stuff than the daily digest of what I have been eating, how I feel and how the weather has been doing (speaking of which, there are plenty of websites for that to make you jealous).

To start it off I will be telling you a bit about the area that I live: Maadi. Maadi is a big neighbourhood in the southwest bank of the Nile. It’s a huge neighbourhood with a nice history to it that you read in the Wikipedia article. I live in a part where the appartment blocks are closer to each other than those in the article. It feels like a sort of middle class neighbourhood and that’s a good thing. You don’t want to live among the posh rich Egyptians who try to copy the west in every way, and also living among the very poor would be hard too. In my building are living some families that I can hear through the air shaft my room has a window (the only window) on. Until late at night I hear my neighbours having arguments, I hear the rattling of pans and other cooking materials, little children either screaming or playing (or yelling to their mom that their done with what you do at a toilet). A lively building you could say. Then in the morning the street sellers come by with their distinct calls. Most of the time rather annoyingly high pitched voices that reveal their use for more years than is good for your vocal cords. They are selling vegetables, bread, cotton candy or bringing around the gas.

My working times are set, namely from 9 to 5, but until now I have never made those times exactly. This morning I was walking to the metro station around 8:30 and schools (of which there seem to be many in the area) were filling up with students. A lot of children walking hand in hand, dressed in their school uniform (remnant from the British presence in Egypt, I guess) and also among all those Egyptian children two little blond boys. Maadi is a real expat neighbourhood as well.

When I came home from work I walked in a different area back to home and it was 17:20, when a large crowd of little children stood outside of their school, waiting to be picked up by their parents. I think there were more than 150 children there, and they were all playing, chatting, laughing, or even fighting amongst each other. There were multiple sellers at the spot who were surrounded by huge groups of children. There was the roasted sweet potato cart, the school supplies seller and the most popular of all: the sugar cane vendor. Even two blocks away I still was surrounded by school boys fighting for a sugar cane they purchased.

Maybe I should also tell about the large amount of street dogs and cats in the area, or about the noise until late at night. However, I’d like you to see Maadi as an idyllic place at first, I’ll repaint that picture later.