15 - 21 February 2001
Issue No.521
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 February 2001 Issue No.521 |
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The best laid plans
The fences are up again in Tahrir Square. What was once a bus station, a busy terminus, is now impossible to cross unless one is sufficiently agile to climb over two metre high corrugated metal fences, and sufficiently brave to then face down what is almost certain to be disapproval from one minor official or another.
Nor are these fences flimsy things. They are the real thing, a barrier to all but the most athletic, solid in their semi-permanence, indicating that some serious work will take place behind. The garden with its recently refurbished fountain has now been effectively cordoned off by the same, blue metal barriers, leaving only the narrowest of strips diagonally facing the old ministry of foreign affairs building, while getting across the square from the Egyptian Museum has turned into an exercise requiring almost as much ingenuity as escaping the maze of the minotaur. Bring string, Ariadne, lest you spend years on the wrong side of the fence.
It is no doubt possible to discover precisely what the plans are for the square. Indeed, given the right degree of tenacity, a willingness to relentlessly pursue by telephone, to make personal appearances in governorate offices and appeals to the employees therein, it is quite likely that, eventually, one might even be furnished with photocopies of the plans themselves, so that what emerges on the site, or fails to emerge, will come as no surprise. But one thing is certain: whatever finally appears will not remain as it first appeared for long. It will divide, and be reborn, behaving for all the world like an amoeba on amphetamines.
Why then bother pursuing the facts of the matter, when the facts of the matter are only likely to remain facts for, at most, a couple of years? Better by far to sink into the sheer arbitrariness of it all, to embrace that random quality that, if you seek to fight it, will only turn to frustration, perhaps even despair, driving the hapless victim into endless daydreams centred on some quiet, rustic idyll where, because nothing ever happens life is somehow better. It is a common delusion, this, the desire to sit beneath a palm tree and watch precisely nothing and assume that this is what calm is all about. That it is a common malaise, though, should not blind us to the madness of the aspiration.
Better, healthier, less mad to stand, as I stood only two weeks ago, on the Corniche, late for an appointment, in a terrible rush, only to notice after 20 minutes had passed that vehicles were no longer travelling north on that particular stretch of road. Why are there no taxis? Where are all the taxis? Isn't it always like this when you need to be somewhere fast? The questions formed and were reformulated until the sudden, belated dawning. It had taken almost half an hour for me to see the obvious, which is not quite such a waste of time as it might seem, since it managed to cut down to size any misplaced pride in my own powers of observation.
Rush rush rush. After the dawning of my own stupidity I trotted off to Latin America Street where I assumed I would be able to hail a cab. But Latin America Street, too, had overnight become one way and that, inevitably, was the wrong way as far as I was concerned. But this time it took only five minutes to spot what was happening, which confirms what is commonly believed. Like Pavlov's famous dogs, we too can learn from experience. So trot trot, rush rush, past the British and then American Embassy, past the Semiramis and finally onto Tahrir Street, emerging almost exactly opposite where the strip of garden not hidden behind the fences remains, by which point I was almost halfway to my destination, and slightly more than an hour late.
Once burned, twice shy. The following day I traipsed across Garden City and onto Qasr El-Aini to take a taxi to work. For a week every working day was preceded by the same gentle stroll, pleasant enough if one manages to accomplish it before the hordes of office and bank workers have double parked in such a manner as to render some streets virtually impassable. And every day I would return, taking a cab along the Corniche, past the bottom of the garden of the British Embassy, and then a hundred yards further on before turning left by the Pakistani ambassador's residence and into my street, which by this point had inexplicably acquired two metal barriers and fluorescent baton waving traffic policeman. Not once, during that first week, did it register that cars were now turning off the Corniche and into Latin America Street, even though I muttered under my breath at the traffic jams this particular manoeuvre invariably causes, and in which I was invariably caught.
This particular redirecting of the city's traffic flow had, a reliable source subsequently revealed, been two years in the planning. Two years on the drawing board, implemented overnight and then, as far as Latin America Street was concerned, cancelled the next.
Now, of course, I no longer begin my day strolling to Qasr El-Aini Street but instead head past the now empty Seraggedin villa, the fate of which I am in a position to daily assess, turn left, and stand hopefully opposite the British Embassy to wait for a taxi.
They now go in my direction, though there is no guarantee that this will continue indefinitely. It may change tomorrow, or next week. Plans could very easily be being drawn up this very moment, in some distant office of the Cairo governorate, ready for implementation in 2003.
It is best, I think, that the general public should remain ignorant of such plans, if plans there are. Were they to be publicised it is perfectly possible that they might spark endless debate, generating thousands of words in newspapers of every hue, as the world and his second cousin seeks to have a say on something that, after all, can be reversed overnight. It is not only that it is barely worth the trouble knowing in advance what is being planned; rather, there is no point at all.
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