Egypt from bookish, a weblog by George Girton

Egypt . . . . . jul 21 2005 — bookish126.dat

Just moments after I posted the "I blog for human rights" logo here (see lower right), I met a man who made me realize why. He drove me to the airport. Last year, though, he was jailed for two monhts in Egypt, his country of birth. Why? He had criticized the president. "What president?" I asked. "Mubarak," he replied. And now he was driving me to LAX in a Yellow Cab, his second day on the job. Second trip ever to LAX, in fact. I was somewhat at a loss for the conversational bon mot as my Egyptian driver broke one well-known traffic law after another ("I had a family of black passengers, they were very angry. He said 'don't you know how to drive?'" Well, obviously not!)

I became philosophic at an instant. "Well, so he is turning left when the left-turn arrow is red," I thought. "Maybe in Egypt they have a way of getting to the airport a little more quickly. By not waiting for the green???"

As it turned out, this was optimistic. We didn't take La Tijera, that goes right to the "Departures" at LAX (assuming you know the way). The trip cost more than usual.

No matter, you still ought to hop on a camel to your local library and add A Portrait of Egypt : A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam [buy at amazon] . by Mary Ann Weaver to your 2005-2006 reading plans. Something has happened in Egypt in the last 25 years, something we ought really to have been paying attention to.

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