Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Letters to the Editor

		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Airport hell
Sir- I have admired Egypt's culture for a very long time and I am president of the German-Egyptian society in Kassel, Germany. I really enjoyed my last stay in Luxor two weeks ago because I could see that the preservation of the ancient monuments, as well as the modern infrastructure of the city of Luxor, has been greatly improved.
Nevertheless, my departure from Luxor Airport on 19 April at 2.10pm was an incredible nightmare. Reportedly, 3,000 tourists were cooped up in a non-air-conditioned departure lounge for more than two hours because the staff could not cope with the takeoff of seven airplanes at one time. Children began to cry and adults let fly with a stream of abuse, but none of the staff felt responsible for the unbearable situation. The circumstances even caused a high security-risk, since the only departure gate was blocked by some "very important" officials, who shouted frighteningly.
I appeal to the airport director to do everything to maintain order and to avoid such a disaster in future.
Dr Michael von Ruden
Kassel, Germany

Snappier photos
Sir- Being an avid sports fan, I thoroughly enjoy reading your sports page which carries several interesting stories that I fail to find in other local publications.
There is, however, something I do find in your esteemed page that I see in all other Egyptian newspapers and magazines: dull photos, especially of football matches. Rarely, if ever, are photographs published of a goal being scored, or about to be scored, by the foot or the head, or a goalkeeper diving to save a shot, or courageously throwing himself at the feet of a charging opponent.
A case in point was the crucial Egypt-Algeria encounter in a World Cup qualifier. Seven goals were scored but you wouldn't know it by looking at the pictures. This, despite the presence of at least 10 photographers behind either goal. All the reader got the following day -- and gets 99 per cent of the time -- is a picture of two or more players fighting for a loose ball in mid-field. Such photos, if taken right, can be entertaining in themselves but they surely cannot be the only image we can reproduce of matches.
I suggest the next time you go to a local soccer match concentrate for awhile on the photographers. Look at their hands. They're holding their heads when a goal is missed; covering their eyes when another opportunity goes begging; up in the air, beseeching the heavens, before a penalty is taken; and still further up when a goal is scored. And a lot of the time their hands are simply in their pockets. Their hands are almost everywhere except, that is, where they should be, holding their cameras, their finger on the button, poised to capture an exciting, perhaps momentous moment, in time.
I understand the pressures of deadlines and that it is quicker and easier to take a couple of hurried, haphazard pictures of any on-field banality than to wait patiently to capture that $1 million photo. And apparently, there is little incentive, at least in Egypt, to take a Pulitzer prize-winning shot since its fate, after just one day, is dusty archives forever after.
But I assure you such photos will be deeply appreciated by your readers. For they not only embellish a page. They are works of art that linger in memory, and are often talked about, long after the shutter closes.
Mohamed Ibrahim
Heliopolis

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