Why
you should come to Cairo. Now.
Perhaps more than most, I am known for openly criticizing Cairo. This is because I am way past the infatuation phase in my relationship with this city. I have said and continue to say that it is dirty, crowded, chaotic, draining, dysfunctional, and frustrating. But one thing I have never said about this place is that it is dangerous. If it were dangerous, I would not live here. Neither would thousands of other foreigners who live here alongside me. Okay, okay, the first week of the uprising was pretty scary. I’ll give you that. But things calmed down soon after. Sure, there is no real government right now, and there still isn’t as many police on the streets as there used to be, but I could think of much more dangerous countries that have functioning governments and plenty of police.
Despite what you hear from the media, Cairo
is safe. The problem with the media is that it broadcasts from Tahrir Square to
the near exclusion of the rest of the country. This results in a skewed version
of reality. Tahrir is not Egypt. It is a tiny sliver of Cairo that serves as a rallying point for political
agitators. Generally, what happens in Tahrir stays in Tahrir and does not
affect the country at large. In fact, half of the time, Egyptians don’t even
know what is happening there.
