The victorious Cairo

Now that we've almost burned and Cairo Midan Tahir Square I remember many times I've walked the city, without doubt one of the most exciting cities in the world and undisputed and indisputable capital of Islamic civilization.

Javier Reverte (1944-2020). VAP had the honor of having the friendship and texts of the most important travel writer in Spain. In this short writing of 2011 He talked about one of his favorite cities of the globe, Cairo, and of madness that is to immerse itself in a superlative city in its virtues and defects.

The victorious Cairo

Now that we've almost burned and Cairo Midan Tahir Square I remember many times I've walked the city, without doubt one of the most exciting cities in the world and undisputed and indisputable capital of Islamic civilization. Already in the classic "The thousand and one nights" could be read: "Who has not seen Cairo, has not seen the world ". He was right to the anonymous author of such judgment: personally, I always thought it is a city that is unlike any other; and this is something I can not say for almost any of the many I have visited. In his book "Journey to Egypt" and "Letters from the East", The immense Flaubert wrote about Cairo with humility and respect, amazed at the explosion of vitalism: "What I can tell? He wrote to a friend in 1850-. Just I'm replacing the first stun. It's like being thrown completely asleep in the middle of a Beethoven symphony, when the coppers torn ear, the low roar and sigh flutes. Then, little by little, everything harmonizes. But early days, the devil will drag, in a deafening din of colors, so much so that your poor imagination, as before a firework images, remains completely dazzled ".

"Who has not seen Cairo, has not seen the world ". He was right to the anonymous author of such judgment

It is important to make one thing clear with Egypt in general and Cairo in particular: Egyptians are not Arabs. They belong to a different ethnic group and only have in common with the Arabs which, mostly, are Muslim. It happens as the Turks, who frequently often called Ottomans, when the Ottomans were nothing more than an ethnic group within the ethnic Turkish dynasty which created a monarchical. Another curious aspect is that Egypt was never independent, since the end of the Pharaonic civilization until Nasser seized power and proclaimed its independence from British protection in 1956. For most of its history has been a country under foreign powers: Assyrians, Persian, Greeks, Romans, Arab, Turks, French, English .... And that theA word Cairo comes from the Arabic expression al-Qahira, meaning Victorious. Upon whom victorious? For now, only on the English in 1956 Mubarak and in this 2011. Contra Israel, To take one recent example, lost all wars.

But the city, especially, dignifies his enormous vitality. Go and check the traveler when things calm down after the recent popular revolution. Dusty, poor, night owl, odorous, Queen of overcrowding and garbage, mother of all vices and virtues, vulgar and refined, cultured and vulgar, full of miserable gay bars and cafes where you drink tea and smoke water pipes, Islamic and European, pious and pagan ..., Cairo fascinates the traveler, wrap it with aromas and odors, I love and perverts. And when you go through the city on your own, has the sensation of opening curtains suddenly reveal hidden secrets in sight for centuries.
Go check it out, friends. Who has not seen Cairo, has not seen the world.

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