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هنا القاهرة

Homage to Chaos

Honal Qahira (Hona al Qahira if you don’t care about pronunciation) or “Here is Cairo” in Arabic is a famous filler announcement for Egyptian Radio and reportedly the very first line to be transmitted across the airwaves in early 1930s and has survived through the decades. It’s a line that every Egyptian can hear in the back of their minds so distinctly even though we don’t seem to remember when or where we used to hear it. But we all did. 

The words, the voice, and the delivery seem to be one of the few remaining iconic cultural relics that would resonate with every Egyptian. 

This is not by any means a nationalistic commentary (for the most part national pride strikes me as an arbitrary, misplaced, and overrated emotion), but rather a thought about icons and symbols that run through the lives and experience of people so different from one another and, until January 25th, seemed to have less and less in common everyday.

Our city’s landscape is one of the few things that we’re all forced to share, and that we all recognize. And Cairo is definitely one of the few cities that seem to have a life of its own, or in other words that feels like a living being. It’s the common relative that we all have regardless of education, age, wealth, faith, sexuality or any of the myriad “markers” that we’re so fond of cultivating. It’s the loud, messy, weird, and annoyingly intrusive relative who for some reason you can’t get yourself to dislike. 

It baffles me (and I would argue, anyone) how this city manages to survive, let alone function, as smoothly (yes) and safely as it does given the long list of ailments and the chaos that seems to run through its veins. I think we are living in the middle of the most efficient and most whimsical maelstrom that had ever existed. And I love it.