28 Feb. - 6 March 2002
Issue No.575
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
How do you draw a nightmare? Surrealism, abstraction, melodrama: none of these is adequate, none comes close to conveying the utter horror those who survive must feel. This is a reminder, if any was necessary, that poverty kills; and often it does so brutally, savagely, suddenly, to remind us just what neglect and ignorance can do. The victims died screaming, pounding at the windows, gasping desperately for air. They knew just what was happening: they were burnt alive in a moving furnace. Did you hear the one about the Sa'idi who...? The Delta's inhabitants, more accustomed to education, urban amenities, the kindness of the Nile, have been accustomed to mocking the South, "remote" and "underprivileged" -- the south that time forgot as development marched on elsewhere. The night must have been very dark, before the tongues of flame illuminated it with a lugubrious and deathly glow.
By George Bahgoury
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