Points

There’s an Egyptian Arabic language website and accompanying newsletter called Egypt ICT, which provides news, views and commentary on that most excellent country’s burgeoning ICT scene. Recently it’s been the centre of an outbreak of PR/journalist angst which has proven most fascinating, reporting on a series of events that appear to have sparked a new, well, grumpiness on the part of the country’s press corps.

Back in June, the newsletter gleefully reported a series of gaffes on the part of mobile phone company Nokia. A spat over the apparent exclusion of a number of journalists from a press event appeared to create significant ill-feeling amongst the media there. This was then followed Nokia’s communications people in Egypt apparently suggesting to a rather ungrateful Egyptian media that they might like to conform to a new points based system for rewarding compliant journalists. Points were allegedly to be awarded in return for coverage and journalists who collected lots of points would have privileged access to Nokia executives.

The howl of protest that accompanied this move has still not died down: journalists are, I venture to suggest somewhat gleefully, attacking Nokia and, increasingly, its products in the Egyptian media.

Now the outbreak of grumpiness has crossed over into that most delicate of relationships: that between PRs and journalists. An invitation has been sent out to Egypt’s PR fraternity (‘the marina boys’ in the invitation: a reference to the fact that PRs are seen as yahoos from the yacht club) that offers them a training course in writing media releases and other materials in ‘decent’ Arabic.

It would appear that battle lines are being drawn and that there is going to be some fun to be had out of this. Long abused, disrespected and neglected, Egypt’s journalists have often created a rod for their own backs because it is all too easy to ‘buy’ coverage – either through paying the paper directly or a journalist indirectly. There are, don’t get me wrong, decent and scrupulous journalists in Egypt who do not do this.

It would appear, however, that the money is no longer enough. It looks like the sheer disrespect accorded Egyptian journalists has finally become too much. Companies beware!

Cairene Reflections

Back for the first time in 8 years to this crazy, quixotic, frenetic, noisy, rambling metropolis where Africa meets Arabia. Soaking it all in, delighted by every twist and turn, remembering and celebrating this place that, for two years, was virtually my second home. Dappled light, ramshackle tenements, the placid Nile, scraped and bumped cars, busted sidelights and broken down kerbstones. People: everywhere people, lazing, laughing, running, scowling. Rubbish on the streets, sprawling cables above and concrete cancer eating the facades of slab-sided blocks of flats and the filigreed art nouveau buildings that butt up against them in a dizzying upwards accretion of ages. Everything seems smashed and cobbled together. Here are life’s extremes, rich and poor; sick and hearty, young and old, caught up in the uncaring torrent of traffic and the relentless, pounding tide of humanity washing up against the roads crammed with cars jostling insanely in the orange glow of the dying sun.

My last memory of Cairo all those years ago was crossing the river in a black and white cab, watching a man with his legs severed above the knees beg at the traffic lights, propelling himself on a rickety cart, pushing against the faded tarmac with a stone in his hand. Reaching the other side of the river only to catch a moment of timeless humanity: a good-looking young policeman chatting up a pretty girl, his grin cheeky and hers, cast over the shoulder and flirty, a moment, caught in the sun, of youth and pleasure. That’s Cairo.

Everyone’s on the make, over-eager to grin like a Nile crocodile at the Inglez and take his money. They’re welcome to what little I have, even the blowsy, raven-haired receptionist, caked in make-up and stuffed, like an afterthought, into a uniform bursting at the seams with her bountiful yet grudging charms.

Everywhere you go, you’re ‘Seer’: “Is this your first time in Cairo Seer?”

The Egypt Air Restaurant in the airport hasn’t changed since the 1980s: nothing seems to have moved, not even the display of slightly desiccated yucca plants, their withered leaves more like papyrus than living organism. Perhaps the ceiling tiles are dirtier than they were, perhaps not. As I have so many times before, I sit here and drink a cold beer before leaving.

This time I’m lost in space, looking out of the dirty window and wondering what it is about Cairo, this raddled old whore of a city that I love so much and yet had forgotten that I loved.