Lonely Girl Travels

I landed in Cairo like something shot out the bottom of a waterslide: a sharp gasp and splash of forward momentum, wedgie-style with a sting up the nose, blinking, shaking water from my ear for the four days. Completely unprepared, and didn’t know what to expect, except that I hadn’t even given it enough mental energy to expect anything.

Which isn’t entirely true—I expected it to be fairly modern, fairly developed. After two weeks in Albania, Cairo felt downright fancy, wealthy even. (There’s a Metro! When’s the next time I’m gonna get to ride a Metro?) I arrived during Eid, which is basically a four-day shitshow of fireworks, honking, running the streets—a Muslim teenage boy version of Girls Gone Wild.

But the daytimes are sleepy as fuck, Downtown dead, shuttered, traffic-less and breezy. I met up an old friend’s little sister, who I hadn’t seen since I was in high school (insert requisite “Oh my God, you’re a woman now!”). We ate koshari and drank Turkish coffee and wandered around, making our way over to Tahrir Square.

Where, if I’d stopped to think about it while I’d been crashing down that waterslide, I would have expected it: a shitton of political stencils.

Running around snapping photos, many of which Kate was able to translate and explain to me, turned out to be the dopest part of my four-day stay.

Leading up to the square, this is a pretty typical shot of what the walls are looking like down there. The half-face on the left is one of the more popular stencils, which I saw in various forms. It’s of Alexandrian blogger Khaled Said who was beaten and killed by the police, pre-Arab-Spring. Outcry and attention (speareheaded by FB group “We are all Khaled Said”) over his death are credited with fueling the flames that eventually led to the January 25th uprising.

Cool because I’d seen almost the exact same Anarchy head in Kosovo.

Another jailed blogger, Alaa Abdel Fattah.

Face on the left of the tree is of Mina Danial, another blogger who was killed.

The next batch are all on the wall by the American University.

“We are all the martyr Mina Danial.”

“Retribution for Mubarak.”

Date of a protest, alongside the star-and-fist logo of the revolutionary socialists. Stencils are apparently one of the primary ways protest dates get circulated.

“I am the brain, you are the muscle.” Liked that this lady walked into the shot.

Face on the left is of a TV newscaster (missed his name) who canceled his show rather than be censored.

A classic. Writing beneath reads: “Long Live the People of my Country.”

Writing inside the TV reads: “Go down to the streets”—ie, don’t rely on the TV/media to tell you what’s going on.

Another of Khaled Said. Quite liked the placement beside the doorway.

Never quite figured out what the cow meant, but there were a lot of them…

K, here’s one all the Occupiers can get down with: a banker being, um, poked, with a caption that reads: “Strike!”

Perhaps not the most well-executed, but reminded me of the Sherpard Fairey guns and roses piece.

Personal favorite, for obvious reasons (though only got groped once): “No touching. Castration awaits you.” Shit yeah!

Don’t have captions/translations/context for the rest of these. If anyone’s got any insights or context to offer, holler…

Metro stops.

…And, a typical street scene round the Square, with a lil hidden gem.

It was really cool and really fucking refreshing to see all these stencils up. You know, you come across a lot of jaded people—people who will tell you that street art is played out, has sold out, commercialized and commodified and done for. There’s an element of truth to what they say, sure, but I think that level of cynicism is dangerous.

So it was rad, all else aside, to see all this up, in this context. Street art is, in its origin and at its core, a political act. At least that’s how I see it. It may be all the other sceney bullshit too, but walking around Tahrir Sqaure, I was reminded of the crucial role it can still play, the dissent it can represent, and how it can be un-fucking-stoppable. And, in a place where there’s such intense repression and media censorship, street art plays a vital role.

It’s like social media—which can be be soul-sucking and superficial—if you let it. The same cynical voices will tell you that FB and Twitter are deteriorating authentic human interaction. Which very well may be true. But, if you look at the fuller picture—holy shit, look what it can do! Look how it can connect people. It’s not a coincidence that authorities, from Tahrir Square to BART, shut down cell phone reception in the face of protests. It’s not a coincidence that the majority of faces stenciled here are bloggers. Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of BS that comes along with the territory, but that’s the world we live in, you know? And check out the crazy, amazing tools we have to make it a better place.

Street art is one.