Walk like an Egyptian

With Egypt, there is always a bitter after taste. Spectacular sights are followed by revolting sights of rotting carcasses and garbage. A nice visit to a museum could be spoilt by a taxi driver trying to rip you off. It makes you wonder how the cradle of civilisation ended up in such a sorry state. Sitting on oil deposits and attracting 8 million tourist every year is not exactly the recipe for a poor and dirty country. Or is it? Perhaps it breeds complacency, perhaps it breeds overreliance on tourism, perhaps it breeds inertia. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. When anybody mentions Egypt now, I really can't decide if the image should be a statue of the Majestic Ramses II smiting his enemies or the man on the streets of Cairo, cap in hand, the other hand oustretched asking for baksheesh (tip/bribe, you decide). Everywhere you go, you see young men standing around, idle. Why is this so? Why aren't they employed? Perhaps its the thought that everything is God's will. Shah Allah. That they are born into poverty and that it is God's will that they stay in poverty?
" ...he and his men kept the protection money for themselves, imposing restrictions and punhisments on the harafish and reducing them, as Sheikh Said said, to the station alloted them by Almighty God..."
~ Naguib Mahfouz, The Harafish
I think this passage written by the Nobel Laureate really highlights the inertia that stems from a belive that poverty is their lot and therefore there is nothing that they can do about it. Even football commentaries are punctuated with "if god willing he will get the ball..."
Perhaps it is successive occupations, from the Romans, the Arabs, theMamluks, the Ottomans, the French and the British that has led to this submissive attitude. That perhaps has lead to Mr Mubarak being in power unchallenged for such a long time.

In Egypt, my accomodations ranged from hostel to hilton, my means of transport ranged from 4 feet to 4x4 , meals from 20cents to 20 bucks. Here are more photos, not of the tourist sights but of a tiny ( bordering on miniscule) glimpse into the life of an Egyptian.