The feast is like a fever that infects the young men in the streets with hyper active energy and a desire to roam the streets aimlessly. A staycation in cairo during the festive time can be relaxing, however a walk in the streets of Zamalek can be described as getting lost in a stampede!
As I walked in the street forgetting what a mistake that was, I felt like Simba the cub in Disney's Lion King when he was tripped over by the rushing stampede. I saved my self before getting stepped on or who knows what worse, by locking the doors of my car and rushing home like a thief trying to escape the police. So many analogies that can be described, not trying to romanticize my image or anything but for any girl not just me, it is exactly like a giselle when faced with hundreds of hunters or hungry animals, the fear, the adrenaline rush and the sound of ones pounding heart is the same.
They are thousands of young men with almost the same face. They have almost the same worn out or bleached jeans, with the same cheap cotton shirts, with their weak bodies, and under developed sizes, due to the malnutrition. In their twenties looking like fourteen year olds, with cigarettes between their lips, with baby hair over their lips, with their disgusting ways, they harass, in every way, with their eyes, with their lips, with their steps, with their everything they terrorize. I went down to get art supplies forgetting that the perverts spend their feast in my part of town during this time of year. Through out the year it is not safe, however during the feast, it could be fatal! They go nuts on the holiday, and they are from the male sex only. I wondered what happened to the female population? My mother explained to me that they are doing the dishes back home.
With our population we could be as productive as the Chinese, as dedicated as the Indians, we could be exporting people with skills, however the case is not so. the only thing we have perfected is creative ringtones for our cell phones, and the art of smoking up. No matter how low ones income is he or she will have a cell phone and will afford a pack of cigarettes. The masses of the once so great Egypt have perfected one thing creating more of them, the ability to make more hungry, starving aimless, ignorant, and sad individuals.
Divorce rates are 60 percent, garbage accumulated in the streets and nobody picks it up, we keep doubling in size, women work and men stay home, traditions and complexities continue to pressure the youth into marriages that end in divorce and men still think they are superior kings and women remain captive however the added burden of financially supporting their families has only added to their misery. Out of despair from this earthly life they keep covering more of themselves voluntarily, out of a need to assure their place in heaven, although their jeans remains tight and their attitudes do not show more modesty, and their striking colors of clothes scream look at me and do not dismiss me, the need to cover the hair stems from the continuos religious preaching on the satellite channels from religious media pros who manipulate people into becoming more submissive. Any one who speaks of change in the media, will not be free to go back home.
Taboos are still those that were a century ago: religion, sex and politics. Although people can speak their minds at home with friends without worrying about their cousin being a spy. Movies, soap operas, flu fears, religious manipulations, hunger are all keeping the people from any movements. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and make more children and everyone is silently smoking up or getting tipsy.
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