Egyptian Women

It seems that being a woman in Egypt is like being an Asian domestic servant in the Gulf.

A depressing report that says what we all know: nearly all women in Egypt encounter forms of sexual harassment by men, from suggestive speech to inappropriate touching and what is even more painful is that alot of women believe that they bring harassment on themselves because of the clothes they wear and the manner in which they carry themselves.

The fact that all women encounter abuse suggests that all (or at least most) Egyptian men are abusers, except ofcoarse me and you the reader of this blog... on second thought, if you are an Egyptian male and you have nothing better to do than read this blog, then you probably are an abuser too, which means that I am the only Egyptian man who doesn't abuse women.

The Top Ten

I believe that the universe is governed by an all-powerful deity and that the guys listed below are surely the most cruelly sublime joke he's played upon the human race over the past fifty years.

This is a list of the longest serving presidents in the world (not including royalty. i.e. queens, kings, emperors, sultans and emirs etc.

1) Cuba's Fidel Castro, since February 16, 1959 (born August 13, 1926)
2) Gabon's Omar Bongo, since November 28, 1967 (born 30 December 1935)
3) Libya's Muammar Al Qaddafi, since September 1, 1969 (born 1942)
4) Western Sahara's Mohamed Abdelaziz, since August 30, 1976 (born August 17, 1947)
5) The Maldives' Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, since November 11, 1978 (born December 29, 1937)
6) Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, since August 3, 1979 (born June 5, 1942)
7) Angola's José Eduardo dos Santos, since September 10, 1979 (born August 28, 1942)
8) Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, since March 4, 1980 (born on February 21, 1924)
9) Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, since October 14, 1981 (born May 4, 1928)
10) Cameroon's Paul Biya, since November 6, 1982 (born February 13, 1933)

source: list of state leaders by date, wikipedia

They all could use plastic surgery, but if you have been in politics for that long the operation becomes medically impossible because you become double faced and develop thick skin that no pliers can cut through.

Fazlaka

Fazlook is a unique Egyptian word that describes people who spend thousands of pounds on paper shredders and personal organizers, unaware that they are too insignificant to possess papers that are worth shredding or personal lives worth organizing.

Fuck

One of the most interesting and versatile words in the English language today is the word "fuck". It is the one magical word which, just by its sound, can describe pain, pleasure, love, and hate. "Fuck" falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive (they fucked the economy) and intransitive (the economy was fucked by them). It can be an action verb (who gives a fuck about poor people?), a passive verb (they really don't give a fuck), an adverb (He is fucking interested in football), or as a noun (he is a stupid fuck). It can also be used as an adjective (he is fucking ugly) or an interjection (Fuck! there is no jobs for all the young people). It can even be used as a conjunction (he laughs like an idiot, fuck he's also stupid). As you can see, there are very few words with the overall versatility of the word "fuck". Aside from its sexual connotations, this incredible word can be used to describe many situations:

Fraud: "I got fucked by the car mechanic."

Resignation: "Oh, fuck it!"

Trouble: "I guess we're fucked now."

Aggression: "FUCK YOU!"

Disgust: "Fuck the Cairo rush hour traffic."

Confusion: "What the fuck.......?"

Despair: "Fucked again..."

Displeasure: "What the fuck is going on here?"

Lost: "Where the fuck are we?"

Disbelief: "UNFUCKING BELIEVABLE!"

Retaliation: "Up your fucking ass!"

Denial: "I didn't fucking do it."

Perplexity: "I know fuck all about it."

Apathy: "Who really gives a fuck, anyhow?"

Suspicion: "Who the fuck are they?"

Panic: "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Directions: "Get out, fuck off."

Disbelief: "How the fuck did they do that?"

It can be used in an anatomical description- "He's a fucking asshole."

It can be used to tell time: "It's two thousand and fucking one and we are still debating the veil."

It can be maternal: "He is a mother fucker."

It can be political: "Fuck the government"

Cruelty

All married couples quarrel sometimes and when they do, they might say or do something that they would regret later on. They can hurt each other verbally and in extreme cases physically.

Husbands who beat their wives are the scum of the earth, but I can't find words to describe the Saudi man who threw his wife out of the window. Warning: this is a shocking video from Al Arabiya website.

The veiled woman clings to the ledge with two hands as her feet dangle off what appears to be the third floor. Finally, after a short struggle, the man is seen returning inside, abandoning the woman as she screams for help. The voices of shocked spectators can be heard on the ground below from the vantage point of the cameraman. But within a few seconds, it’s all over. The woman suddenly loses her grip, her left leg snapping on the balcony below as she plummets toward the ground.

Tony Blair Resigns

Tony B-liar announced his resignation today after only ten years in power... and no he's not dead yet.

He did alot for his country, but fucked up big time by going along with the invasion of Iraq. Still it is refreshing and fascinating for me as an Egyptian and an Arab to see a democraticlly elected head of state actually resigning... wow.

And he's not promoting his son to succeed him. Unbelievable.

Saudi prince convicted of smuggling cocaine

Saudi Prince Nayef al-Shaalan was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail on charges of involvement in a cocaine smuggling gang in France.

Weird. Why would a rich Saudi prince smuggle drugs?

Wishful Thinking

U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday to wish him a happy birthday and congratulate him on his son Gamal's marriage.

Amazing, isn't it?

After having his fingers burnt in Iraq, Bush is now thinking: "better the devil you know". The American policy in the middle east for the past fifty years dictated that stability and is more important than freedom and democracy and as U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull described a South American dictator back in the forties: "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch".

Things looked like they might change after the invasion of Iraq, but it soon became clear that all the talk about democracy in the middle east was no more than wishful thinking.

And the speculations go on...

So yesterday was Hosni Mubarak's 79th birthday and Gamal Mubarak's wedding night. How nice.

Many think that the 43 year old is positioned to succeed his father as a "democratically elected" president. What can possibly be wrong with that? It's a perfectly normal thing in the Middle East, but according to this, Gamal is not competent enough and as such is incapable of becoming our next president. He recently even spelt it out himself.

Who will it be the? It could be the 72 year old intelligence chief Omar Soliman, but by the time Mubarak is finished Soliman won't have alot of juice left in him either, so who will succeed Soliman? Gamal or someone else? And meanwhile, the Muslim Brothers will keep on playing the waiting game hoping for the right moment to pounce. Fuck it.

Stitched... literally

I recently overheard this conversation between two pimple faced 15 year olds.

Boy 1: When you get married, what if you find out on your wedding night that your wife is not a virgin?

Boy 2: I would divorce her the following day.

But this moron might never find out that his future wife is not really a virgin.

Harming the national interest.... again

An Aljazeera journalist was handed a six month prison sentence for "harming the country's national interest by fabricating torture scenes for a documentary."

Howaida Taha was producing a documentary about police brutality in Egypt. In this documentary she reenacted some torture scenes, which is a common technique (not the torture I mean the reenactment) used by documentary makers around the world, but the Egyptian government called this fabrication, i.e. they say she intended to use the reenactment scenes as if they were real torture scenes.

A couple of observations on this. How can they tell how she was going to use the reenactment scenes before the documentary was even produced? If she had really intended to misuse the reenactment scenes this would have been a big professional mistake. Now if a journalist or any other professional commits such a mistake they get punished or even fired, but not go to jail. Also, why didn't the government sue Al Jazeera? Wasn't she working for them and ultimately the channel is responsible for what they produce and put out on air.

The worrying thing in this case is that it looks like the Egyptian government is trying to scare anyone who dares to even think about speaking out against any form of corruption. They have done a good job, the Egyptian blogosphere recently lost two of it's best bloggers, Big Pharaoh and Sandmonkey and although the number of readers of this blog is embarassingly low, I feel intimidated too, because according to their twisted idiotic logic, I could be guilty of harming the reputation of Egypt if I blog about what I really think of the Egyptian government and officials

And finally, accusations such as harming the "reputation" or the "national interests" of Egypt are really sickening. Who is harming the reputation and interests of Egypt, the corrupt officials, judges and policemen or the journalists who report on them?

The Sand Monkey

The Sand Monkey is in my humble opinion, undisputedly the best Egyptian blogger. His wit, intelligence and insight is amazing. He has been blogging since 2004, but decided to quit blogging.

This is a very big loss for the Egyptian blogosphere. I will miss this monkey's blog :(

His last words on his blog were:

May the day comes when I rant once again….

I really hope so because it's hard to lose the Sand Monkey blog. It feels like your old dog just died.