"I crossed the border of Gaza with Egypt with the aim of doing anything to get my family out of there", Yasser confesses, illegal tourist guide in Cairo. “In adolescence I read a book about mummies that passionate to me and, since, I dedicated myself to looking for information about Egyptology. I speak English, French and Arab. Malading for Cairo I met a guy who opened the doors to his business-mafia of unofficial tourist guides. He assured me that most tourists were not interested, but we would open their way in tourist attractions, We would barge for them and tell them where to sit down to eat. Let, that we made the main decisions: What to see, where to eat, How to think. I could do that, of course."
Gaza's border crossing has been closed since May 2024. Yasser is one of the Gazatis who wait for him to open again to get his mother. “If by then they have not yet killed her”, says. And Yasser, Like all the citizens of Gaza, He knows that every minute of survival in the strip is practically a miracle.
Yasser is one of the Gazatis who wait for him to open again to get his mother.
One day, A guy who knew quite a lot, Not only from Egypt, but of any topic that went by collation, asked about its origin.
-I'm from Gaza, ”Yasser replied.
At once, The attitude of man changed; His parsimony became almost cursed by knowing more.
-Have you fled from war?
-Yes.
-Do you tell me?
Yasser confesses that he felt a wave of panic, stirring his parties; That man was asking him to make all those images that tried to bury -without success- day by day.
"IMM Khultum", Yasser account with a smile. “No one paid attention to the cafeteria dedicated to the artist, To his songs, the u extravagant figure. Tourists ignore the efforts of the waiters to speak their language in search of a tip; What interested them were the details of how my brother had been buried under the roof of his room just one day before his wedding. ”
From that point, Yasser took a narrative of his own; A mixture of historical and contrastable data, and details of your personal tragedy, which was both common to all Palestinian citizens, especially in Gaza.
In Keops front, Kefrén and Micerino told them the story of the six less known pyramids and -according to him- more fascinating.
In Keops front, Kefrén and Micerino told them the story of the six less known pyramids and -according to him- more fascinating. "I am from a minority, I am an expert in the greatness of what is obvious ", Yasser jokes.
Durante Sus Tours, Talk about the use of the Pi number during construction, of astronomical alignment, And what he felt when he returned home and see her. A house that he had raised with his father, to their uncles and their brothers. Under some beams he could see his brother's inert hand. “What do Israeli soldiers think when they destroy whole neighborhoods, hospitals or schools?”, Yasser wonders out loud. Tourists only wiggle their heads and whisper “what horror, How awful".
"We can't even bury our dead."
Break.
"The pyramids are beautiful. Grandiose. TRUE?”
Tourists settle without knowing what.
The next day, In the Archaeological Museum, takes them to the less crowded rooms, those in which the posters instead of being in English and in Arabic are still in French, And in which the showcases offer the remains of the past less vitiated by the popular gaze. There, in front of a sarcophagus of an unknown mummy, relegated to the corner of a secondary room, He tells them about the death of his wife, whose body had not been able to recover. “Will end how this mummy, Without identity, Those who find it will not imagine how much I loved that body that is now just one more rest with the rubble.”
A tourist spills all the tears that the news had failed to start before. Yasser wonders if he cries for him, by war or for herself. Maybe for all at once. Knows that their stories are like onions; Those who listened to them begin to cry moved by their words and end up crying by a Malquerer who never cured. Alright.
A tourist spills all the tears that the news had failed to start before.
The point is that, In a matter of little time, Mouth mouth made its effect and Yasser was required by hungry war groups. Egypt, His pharaohs, His mummies and desert were an excuse. Tourist hordes, carried by the death drive, They look for the illegal guide to look at their wounds. It is not a strange trend, go looking macabro; After all, our story is made of war and disaster. We are a species that went to the circus to see how lions raised prisoners, that we were in major places to witness the burning of witches, And that in some countries there are still public executions; some more obscene than others.
What happens is that the West is an aseptic bubble in which death, The aggressiveness, Hurry, the affections and everything that comes out of the roting line marked by the policies of the right, Fall strange, Sick, sin. Everything is toxified. Everything hides. And then obedient citizens have to leave their life of Scandinavian decoration for a week and They undertake their trip to consume barbarism savings and remember themselves that are still alive, which can still feel. We are in the era of position. We have already overcome the series and the movies. We have already overcome news saturation. And now that? Misery tourism, eg.
“Before tourists wanted to know about ancient funeral rites and curses. Now they go to the gore that occurs beyond the border ", Yasser explains. "I don't feel guilty airing the tragedy. Israelite settlers gather to see how missile. Sometimes I have doubts about whether doing business with my tragedy is morally acceptable. I think we all traffic with our stories, one way or another, And I get peace to think that at least I share a piece of a reality that is not the most popular in the media ”, Add.
"There are places where they are called solidarity tours, perhaps, Not to appeal to guilt. So that the tourist does not feel ashamed of the pleasure he feels when consuming pure tragedy. Thus they feel that they do something for the world, What do I know, THE OLD HISTORY OF THE WHITE WHITE REPITING EVEN, merely changing its manifestation ", explica Hussein, Yasser's partner and law student. "Before the photos were saving poor children. Now one returns with stories in which they assure that they heard three bombs fall to a few meters and that they met a refugee from Gaza whose family burst under the Israeli missiles, y oh, It is so nice, tan, so functional ", Add.
Now one returns with stories in which they assure that they heard three bombs fall a few meters
Tourists buy the illusion of touching horror. "This is real", They repeat astonished. "From the beginning of the war, not only I teach Egypt, I show my scars and say: This is of an explosion, When it really is a bicycle drop, As insulsa as yours. But I am from here and they from there, They do not know much of wounds and assume that my scars are more real than yours or what I know ”, Hussein confesses.
Human beings are strangers, We consume everything, With everything we traffic, even what we would not want to ourselves. Like that genocide that occurs under our gaze and we convert, little by little and without realizing, In our daily bread.
