NO POSTCARDS FROM EGYPT

Cairo, January 2023

This city hits hard from the beginning. As you step out of the airport, pollution blow-dries your face like the exhaust of one of those beautiful old Mercedes that backfires around the city. Wherever you go, the elements conspire. The sun cooks permanently the top of your head while the wind pushes little particles of sand that nest snugly in your eyes.

The city is clearly divided in two, you have the inevitable tourist spots, and, well, Cairo. You’d almost expect someone to ask for your passport when you cross those invisible lines. Once you get out of the triangle-shaped mass hysteria, you enter a pastel palette dreamscape with spasmodic bursts of colour. Five times a day, punctual like they really care, a cacophony of prayers coming from plastic speakers all over the city overflows into the streets as one big grainy voice, wrapping your body like old linen on dead pharaohs.

The day before I left, I was looking for an angle to shoot (with a camera) a group of people who were trying too hard to seize the pyramids between their thumb and their forefinger, when in the corner of my eye I saw a manhole cover slowly moving. From the black hole, a puzzled mole man popped up and stared at the pyramids like he’d never seen a postcard from Egypt.