Save Cairo Houseboats: Waiting for a miracle in a deadly time

It is too hard to write this, it is very heavy to write this post.

I am waiting for a miracle, for divine intervention to make this stop so I won’t need to write anything because I feel too heavy, tired and frustrated as well as sad to speak about what is happening to those houseboats.

We may not see this scene again in the upcoming days 

A couple of days ago, the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation and Water source sent an eviction notice to the owners of 32 Nile houseboats in Imbaba’s KitKat area in Giza governorate.

Despite living for decades there and despite official maintenance bills for decades, the Ministry claims that their existence is illegal.

It is all over the news whether in New York Times, Ahram Online, BBC News, Reuters, Financial Times ABC News, AFP and others in the past week.

The Ministry has already begun to demolish some of the houseboats. They also moved a couple of them for huge sums of money to their warehouses.

I do not need to speak about the history of houseboats in Egypt and how they became part of old and modern Cairo’s visual heritage. It is explained in those links.

Shaimaa Gamal: Egypt’s Femicide rush is still on “Warning: Violent details”

Nearly one week ago, a young university student was stabbed to death in daylight right outside her university’s gates by her colleague whom she rejected his marriage proposal and this Monday we found a TV host who was reported missing 20 days ago was actually killed and buried by her own husband in his Giza villa.

Shorouk Newspaper published an exclusive report about the horrifying murder of TV host Shaimaa Gamal.

Late Shaimaa Gamal

It turned out that the dead body of TV host Shaimaa Gamal was found buried on a farm in Giza. She was shot and her body was awful mutilated by nitric acid.

The not-so-famous yet controversial TV host was missing 20 days ago by her husband, esteemed judge Ayman Haggag in Egypt’s State Council. She was seen in an October city mall then vanished.

The discovery of her body came after a tip the Prosecution received on 26 June.

The man turned out to be Haggag’s driver who told the prosecution that the judge killed his wife following over differences between them in his villa in an-6-October-city compound “I wonder if the neighbours heard gunshots.”

The driver added that his boss mutilated the body using nitric acid. He stated that he helped Haggag in burying the mutilated body of Shaimaa Gamal in the villa’s garden before transferring her to the judge’s farm in Badrshein.

The prosecution waited till the State Council revoked his immunity status on Monday to issue an arrest warrant and declare the crime that became the talk of the town.

Qatar’s Tamim in Cairo : It is called politics

Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani arrived to Cairo on Friday in a two-days visit that is the first since the famous Ula Reconciliation Declaration in January 2021 between Qatar and the Quartet countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia , United Arabi Emirates and Bahrain).

Tamim was received warmly by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi receiving Tamim in Cairo on Friday 
"Egyptian Presidency" 

It is expected that on Saturday that they will hold talks and new business and economic agreements aka Qatari investments mostly will be announced just like in the case of Saudi Arabia and Emirates in the past four weeks. It is not a secret that in the economic crisis , Egyptian government did not hide that it needs direct foreign investments and our brothers are in the Gulf are going to help us.

In March 2022 , Egyptian and Qatari officials agreed on a package of USD 5 billion in investments and partnerships in Egypt. On Wednesday , Egypt and Qatar signed a MoU on financial policies coordination in Doha.

I expect that the talks will be about energy sector and it won’t be surprised that Qatar is interested in liquefying its gas in Egypt to export it to Europe just like Israel and EU’s deal last week. Already Algeria will be the second stop for Tamim’s tour. Other than being Arab countries , gas is the common factor between Egypt, Qatar and Algeria.

Dear Egypt, you have a femicide problem that you must face

Egypt has got a femicide problem and it seems that it is growing over time as it is not being dealt with as it should.

Monday afternoon, Egypt was shocked to read the news coming from Dahaqliya governorate that a female student was killed in the board daylight right outside the Campus of Mansoura University by her fellow student.

She was slaughtered to be accurate in the description according to an extreme shocking video that showed the last moments of her murder and the arrest of the murderer.

The videos and photos of her body in a yellow shirt and blue jeans lying in her own blood on the dirty pavement till the arrival of the police are among the worst scenes one can see this year.

21-Naira Ashraf, a student in the Faculty of Arts at Mansoura University was killed by a fellow student whom she rejected his advances several times. According to reports, the murderer turned out to be an A+ student according to the professors in the faculty.

Late Naira Ashraf 

He and Naira are from the same village in Mahalla city in Dahaqliya governorate, Nile Delta. He loved Naira who is stunningly beautiful and asked for her hand in marriage, but she rejected him.

 According to her father who works as a teacher, the 21-years-student did not want to marry at that stage and wanted to focus on her study and her career.

The murderer stalked Naira offline and online to the level that she blocked him on Facebook according to her friends and even filed a complaint at the police station against him according to some reports.

Ramy Fahim case: Chapter Three “A murder in Anaheim by An Irvin Man”

When Fahim moved to work at Pence Wealth Management, it was the beginning of the end for three people including himself.

A screenshot from Fox LA's report about the crime in April 

In the previous chapter last week, we stopped at September 2021 when Ramy Fahim, current Minister of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Nabila Makram’s eldest son announced that he was going to work in a wealth management company in California.

Ramy Fahim joined Pence Wealth Management in Newport Beach, California as a full-time research associate in November 2021 which means he only worked there for 6 months only.

The only known connection known between Fahim and victim Griffin Cuomo was the fact that they were co-workers at Pence Financial Group.

Griffin Cuomo was a fresh graduate from Chapman University in 2021 with a B.A. in Strategic and Corporate Communication with a minor in Creative and Cultural Industries.

He had a girlfriend called Vivien. He joined the company in May 2021 as a marketing and media assistant.

Late Griffin Cuomo 

Now searching around online, the profile of the late Griffin Cuomo was featured in the “Meet the team” with his photo in black and white on the official website of Pence Capital Management before it was removed.

Her name was Ghufran Harun Warsaneh and she was the second journalist to be killed by Israel in less than a month

Late Ghufran Warsaneh

A month has not passed after the cold-blooded murder of Palestinian American veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and we got another journalist killed in a cold blood while doing her job by the only democracy in the Middle East’s Army , the Israeli Army.

On Wednesday , 31-years-old Ghufran Warsaneh was just doing her first news report from the field to Al-Quds radio station in the South of occupied West Bank when she was shot down by the Israeli Army.

It was her third day in the job.

Contrary to the testimonies of Palestinian eye witnesses , the Israeli army claimed that the young reporter was trying to attack the soldiers by a knife mentioning the fact that she was a former detainee in Israeli detention for three months

That was Ghufran’s first job as a reporter after being released from three month detention at an Israeli occupation prison. 

Here was late Ghufran during filming a project for her faculty.

Ramy Fahim's case: Chapter Two "Ramy”

Despite putting up a brave face in the past two days, Minister Nabila Makram of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates teared up when she found herself in front of a standing ovation on Wednesday at the conclusion of the “Egypt Can ... with Industry” Conference.

There was nothing significant for real in the sixth edition of the “Egypt Can” in nutshell but the annual conference which was held at the New Administrative Capital on the outskirts of Cairo and organized by her ministry was the first public event attended by Makram after announcing that her eldest son Ramy was standing trial for murder facing a death penalty in the United States.

تصفيق حاد .. وزيرة الهجرة تبكي أثناء كلمتها بمؤتمر مصر تستطيع بالصناعة pic.twitter.com/uYr1KHJ3cU

— صدى البلد (@ElBaladOfficial) June 1, 2022

Nabila Makram co-inaugurated the conference which aims to benefit from Egyptians abroad’ s expertise with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Tuesday trying to show for real that the matter did not affect her responsibilities as a stateswoman especially after the huge support she received online and from mainstream media. 

Ramy Mounir Fahim 

We got the President of Egypt’s National Council for Woman (NCW) Maya Morsi posting a solidarity post on Facebook to her friend Makram telling her “Fear Not nor grieve” in a direct quotation from the story of Prophet Moses “Peace upon him” in the Holy Quran”

“So, we sent this inspiration to the mother of Moses: "Suckle (thy child), but when thou hast fears about him, cast him into the river, but fear not nor grieve for We shall restore him to thee, and We shall make him one of Our apostles." [28-7]

We also got Nabila Makram featured on the cover of Akher Saa Magazine while praying in a Church with the headline ‘Nabila’s tears’ which can also be read in Arabic as “Noble tears” as Nabila is translated means noble in Arabic. “Seriously, that coverage in that way always fire backs”