This Stays Between Us [Part II]

[ 1 ]

She who steps across the threshold
She who takes the first step
toward the solution
She who walks with you
She who moves us
She who drives us forward

هي من تخطو عبر عتبة الباب
هي من تخطو الخطوة الأولى في اتجاه الحل
هي من تخطو معك
هي من تخطو بنا
هي من تخطو بنا إلى الأمام

[ 2 ]

She walks through spaces of resistance,
in personal acts of remembrance,
tracing multiple paths of protest
converging onto the square.

A public, individual performance
where collective action once abound.

[ 3 ]

Unlike Flaubert in Egypt,
aimlessly roaming
through the unfamiliar city,
captivated,
orientalist fantasies consuming him,
she, with a mission and sensibility,
dreams of treading new pathways
through the streets of downtown Cairo.

[ 4 ]

They drive by Simón Bolívar Square.
She laughs sarcastically as she tells him:³A “pioneering” Egyptian/Arab/African artist, according to a critical Arab curator
“I read once that one of the street signs in Arabic translated Simón Bolívar to Simone de Beauvoir, though I haven’t seen it myself.”
She thinks that he doesn’t know who Simone de Beauvoir is.
He seems puzzled.
Apparently he doesn’t know who Simón Bolívar is either.

[ 5 ]

She notices that El Libertador’s sword is missing from his statue in Simón Bolívar Square.
She later learns that it had been stolen during the clashes in 2012, and that the Venezuelan ambassador has commissioned the Egyptian artist, Sayed Abdou Sleem, to restore it.
Quoting the Ecuadorian poet Olmedo, the ambassador proclaims:

“el brillo de su espada es el vivo reflejo de su gloria.”
(the brightness of his sword is the living reflection of his glory.)

[ 6 ]

She walks home through Simón Bolívar Square
whenever she wants to avoid the intense crowds,
sexual harassment,
head-splitting noise,
and deranged motorists (who speed up when they see you crossing the street).

She avoids the square and walks through Qasr Al-Aini Street
whenever she wants to avoid the U.S. and British embassies,
the overbearing concrete barricades,
and disruptive checkpoints
that surround them.

[ 7 ]

Illuminations into the upside down world:
El Libertador guards the entranceway
to both past and current
oppressive monuments.

Stifling built environments
suffocating social spaces
fragmented
disjointed
disembodied
anxious in hyper-visible invisibility,
she traces the poetics of the unseen.

[ 8 ]

An image captures Cafe Riche,
the street, shops, and nearby alley.
Years ago, a small protest
took over Huda Shaarawi Street,
making its way to Talaat Harb Square.

There was gunfire,
she was shot
on this sidewalk,
and he held her.
Carried off
by her comrades,
she was taken
bleeding
across the street to the alley.

A man stands on the sidewalk
looking toward the exact spot where it took place.
Is he witnessing?
Does he remember?

[ 9 ]

Standing near Huda Shaarawy Street
she looks through images on her phone
from a revolution archive,
images recorded there several years ago.

Covering the screen from the sun with her hand,
drowning out the sounds of the city with headphones,
she observes in silence
as protesting figures
together
move past her
down the street.

She imagines a future archive
performing images of revolutions,
simultaneously superimposing past and future protests.
She wonders:
Which protest does she want to remember?
Which revolution does she want to live?