Tag: egypt

Ramses marching…

As I’m writing now, our King Ramses II is finally making his way to his new home in Giza.
I posted before on the rehearsal, which was successful, but now is the BIG DAY! The statue was scheduled to start moving by 1am, and is expected to arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museum by the Giza platue in 7 or 8 hours (depending on the traffic?). There was a previous report on postponing the move to 6 October instead of 25 August, coz of Israel’s war on Lebanon. With the ceasfire, I guess the govt decided to go ahead with the original schedule.
I went to check out the square in the afternoon, and spoke with some ordinary people as well as engineers involved in the project. Most said they were for moving the statue, to escape the bloody pollution. But they were all sad Ramsis Basha would be around no more. I heard lots of jokes, as expected, on how the Se3eedis (Upper Egyptians) will be lost now when they arrive in Cairo’s central train station. The statue had always been the main placemark for any non-Cairene.
I took some pix of the statue earlier in the afternoon. You can find them on my flickr account. You can also find a slideshow, by Nasser Nouri, of the previous rehearsal that took place on 27 July here.
Ramses II

UPDATE: Nasser Nouri kindly shared some of the pix he took of the King’s march. I uploaded them to my flickr account.

Mubarak dismisses Lebanon, train criticism

The Raiess has spoken…

Egypt‘s Mubarak dismisses Lebanon, train criticism
By Aziz El-Kaissouni
CAIRO, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at critics who have slammed his handling of the conflict in Lebanon as indecisive and slow.
In an interview with Al Massai newspaper published on Thursday, Mubarak dismissed criticism of Egypt’s diplomatic handling of the war in Lebanon, saying that suggestions Egypt was absent from the crisis were wrong.
“My nerves are strong, thank God, and I am fortified against provocation, and I ask God to guide all those who lose their cool, which leads them to slips of the tongue,” Mubarak said, when asked how he felt about attacks from Arab politicians.
He said Egypt’s stance had been clear during the war, with its support for Lebanon and its condemnation of Israeli attacks. But critics have blasted his lack of support for Hizbollah and what they say was Egypt’s slow response to the crisis.

Continue reading Mubarak dismisses Lebanon, train criticism

11 killed in another bus crash, as govt seeks revamping railways

From Reuters…

Egypt seeks $1.5 bln to revamp railways after crash
By Abdel Sattar Hatita
CAIRO, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Egypt, reeling from its worst train disaster in four years, scrambled on Wednesday to find $1.5 billion to overhaul its antiquated rail network.
Fifty eight people were killed and scores injured on Monday when two commuter trains collided in the Nile Delta town of Qalyoub. Egypt’s state news agency said the accident happened after one of the drivers apparently failed to heed a signal.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif had ordered Transport Minister Mohamed Lutfi Mansour to report preliminary findings on the crash by Wednesday. But Mansour gave no hint of the cause in an address to a parliamentary committee convened for the accident.
A cabinet spokesman said the preliminary results were now expected to be released later in the evening or on Thursday.
Mansour told the committee he would dip into proceeds from the $2.9 billion sale of Egypt’s third mobile phone license to help pay for the rail revamp.
He said 5 billion Egyptian pounds ($871 million) would be drawn from the mobile proceeds, and the government would borrow the remainder of the total $1.5 billion that the overhaul is expected to cost.
The money will pay to upgrade equipment, improve maintenance and revamp old engines or buy new ones, Mansour said. It would also go toward installing automated crossings and linking the rail networks by computer.
Mansour said he had initially submitted to parliament in June a plan for upgrading the railways, but it had not been carried out.
In a statement, the transport ministry said Mansour had previously warned of potential danger on the railways.
The train crash in the town of Qalyoub, which prompted Mansour to fire the head of the state railway authority, was Egypt’s worst rail accident since 2002, when a fire ripped through a crowded passenger train, killing about 360 people.
Since Monday’s crash, a string of accidents have hit Egypt’s transport industry. Eleven Israeli Arab tourists were killed on Tuesday when their tour bus flipped on a dangerous curve in the Sinai Peninsula. Earlier that day, a sleeper train collided with a tractor south of Cairo, injuring two people.
Security sources said on Wednesday a further 11 Egyptians were killed overnight and nine injured when a bus in a wedding convoy flipped into a waterway near the southern city of Aswan.

Another black day for the transportation ministry

I’m receiving news there is some nasty bus accident that happened in Sinai today, with casualties.

UPDATE: Here is a Reuters report on the bus crash…

Up to nine Israeli Arabs die in Egypt tour bus crash
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Up to nine Israeli Arabs were killed on Tuesday and 39 injured when their tour bus overturned in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian officials said, the latest in a string of Egyptian transport accidents.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry said five people had died in the crash on a road near the holiday resort town of Nuweiba. Medical and security officials put the death toll at nine.
Medical sources said seven of the injured were in a critical condition.
The crash was the third in two days to hit Egypt’s transport network. Also on Tuesday, a sleeper train collided with a tractor south of Cairo, injuring two people.
On Monday, 58 people were killed in a collision between two commuter trains in Egypt’s worst rail disaster in four years.

AND ANOTHER TRAIN ACCIDENT!!!!! MESH MOMKEN!

Egyptian train collides with tractor: two injured
By Summer Said
CAIRO, Aug 22 (Reuters) – An Egyptian sleeper train collided with a tractor south of Cairo on Tuesday, injuring two people, a day after 58 people were killed in Egypt’s worst rail disaster for four years, security sources said.
Police arrested the train driver after the collision, one of the sources said.
The collision, in the town of Beni Suef 100 km (60 miles) south of Cairo, derailed two carriages and caused panic among passengers.
In Monday’s crash in the Nile Delta town of Qalyoub, a driver apparently ignored a signal and a commuter train ploughed into the rear of another.
Relatives have claimed the bodies of 55 of the dead but three remained unidentified, health officials said.
Tuesday’s collision occurred shortly after Egypt appointed a new head of the state railway authority. The previous head, Hanafi Abdel-Qawi, was fired on Monday and his deputy suspended pending an investigation into the accident.
Transport Minister Mohamed Mansour is due to report the preliminary results of the investigation on Wedesday.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has pledged that anyone found to have been negligent will be held to account.
The crash on Monday was the worst rail accident in Egypt since 360 people were killed in 2002 when fire ripped through seven carriages of a crowded passenger train.

The only good “transportation” news I heard today, was that one of my friends made it from his bedroom to the bathroom safely, without any accidents. He decided to walk.

Updates from Qalyoubiya…

I’ve been on the phone since the morning with a journalist friend present in the scene, and with Photographer Nasser Nouri who managed to make it to Qalyoub.
I was told the rescue services did not show up to the scene, except after at least an hour and half, during which ordinary citizens and uninjured passengers were trying to help the victims and bring them out of the trains.
The Military Police is all over the scene, as one of the trains had a big number of poor peasant army conscripts, and they laid siege on the area.
There are at least 15 Central Security Forces trucks parked few hundreds of meters away from the accident scene. As always the regime takes no chances what angry relatives (angry at what happened, and angry at the state’s incompetence) could do… just like what happened with the Red Sea ferry crisis.
UPDATE: mini clashes started already. A reporter present in the scene just called in to say an MP named Mohssen Radi showed up and started shouting accusing the govt of corruption and negligence. The security services and Mubarak’s National Democratic Party supporters tried to silence him, so the victims’ relatives started shouting accusing the NDP and the security: “You are the ones to blame!” Then they started chanting: “Ihmal! Ihmal Ihmal! (Negligence! Negligence! Negligence!)”
UPDATE: Nasser Nouri sent me pix, that I’ll be uploading in few minutes. Nasser braved his way there as soon as he heard about the tragic accident, and called me again as he got home, his clothes all soaked in blood.
UPDATE: You can find the photos on my flickr account.
UPDATE: The mini clashes I was told about were swiftly contained by the security services, according to a journalist present in the scene. “It lasted for few minutes only, as there are LOADS of security troops around,” he said. MP Mohssen Radi belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary block. He represents the Banha Constituency. My journalist friend had to hung up, as rescue services managed to drag another body from the rubbles.

Peasant conscripts pulled out of the train

Train tragedy

Poor Lebanese had their country’s civilian infrastructure ruined by aggressive Israeli air strikes. In our case, we don’t need the Israelis. We can ruin our country and do the job ourselves…..

UPDATE: Reuters updated the story Issandr posted, including some quotes by govt officials… The families of the dead will receive only US$871 from the authorities as a compensation!
Continue reading Updates from Qalyoubiya…

Al Ustaz

I just got off the phone with Gamal Al Ghitany (a famous novelist, the editor of the literary magazine Akhbar Al Adab and a good friend of Mahfouz’s for 40 years now). He says Al Ustaz is “better.”

I met Mahfouz last Spring. I was invited to one of the “nadwas” he has with groups of friends and admirers in different hotels around town (he always used to meet his friends, regular as clockwork, in qahwas. After the 1994 stabbing attack that was no longer considered safe). Mahfouz came wrapped in a huge coat that he never took off. He’s nearly blind and nearly deaf, and if you want to say something to him you have to yell into his left ear. It’s clearly an effort for him to speak at any length. His hands (the 1994 attack severed nerves) sit curled like talons in his lap. He dozes off now and then if the conversation doesn’t involve him. And yet he’s still clearly in command of his faculties. He makes jokes and he loves it if other people do–he still has an incredibly sweet, deep laugh that seems to light up the room. Halfway throug the evening, he sipped one coffee and smoked one cigarette. A lot of the time I think he doesn’t answer question not because he can’t hear them but because he can’t be bothered. He told me Shakespear and Proust were two of his favourite Western writers.

I’m a Mahfouz groupie. I think his novels are spectacular. Right now I’m reading a lovely book about him, actually by Gamal Al Ghitany, called “Al Magalis Al Mahfouzia“–it’s notes on conversations with Mahfouz over 40 years. When I met him I noticed the overwhelming affection and loyalty that he inspires in his old friends (one of the men who was there, actually, was the same friend who drove Mahfouz to the hospital on the day he was stabbed, holding on hand on the wheel and one on Mahfouz bleeding neck). In his book, Al Ghitany talks about Mahfouz as the ultimate “ragil tayyeb” (“good man”), an embodiment of wisdom, humility and humour. I felt that when I met him–not to sound too romantic, but he seems to radiate the essential, traditional Egyptian qualities: honesty, patience, good cheer, and an unwillingness to take oneself and life too seriously.

Today is my last day in Cairo for a while. I’m going to NYU to do a Masters in Middle East Studies (expect posts on the world of Middle East academia soon). I hope very much to get a chance to see Mahfouz again when I get back.

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