Novel Coronavirus in Egypt : Time to address anti-Asian racism "Updated

In case you do not know, Egypt’s ministry of health and the World Health Organization declared in a joint statement that the first confirmed case of the Novel Coronavirus was detected in the country on Friday.

According to the details that surfaced later, a patient is a Chinese man who arrived in Cairo from China on Thursday and was spotted at Cairo International airport.

He was taken to the quarantine hospital aka Al-Nagila General Hospital in the border governorate to stay there for two weeks or till recovery according to the procedures.

The Quarantine section at 'Cairo International airport
"AFP"

This is the first confirmed case in Africa and honestly earlier Friday I saw comic that Africa was the only Coronavirus continent and people were sharing that comic on Facebook to brag.
Here is the result of bragging.
Anyhow  I will speak now about something that bothers me.

A pharmacist in Zamalek bragged to my aunt on Friday that his pharmacy in the upscale neighborhood refuses to serve Asians !!

On the same day, I found out that Taxis and some Uber captains refuse to serve Asians for fear they turned to be Chinese.

On Saturday, I was shocked to know that a Chinese restaurant in Maadi said it explicitly that Chinese people were not allowed to dine in !!

Happy Valentine’s Day from Ancient Egypt : Egyptian Museum of Cairo edition

Happy Valentine’s Day from Ancient Egypt.

This beautiful couple was at Akhenaten's special section at the first floor of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir square , Cairo.

I do not remember their details but I guess they could be the famous golden couple Akhenaten and Nefertiti

I do not know if they still remain there at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo or they have been shipped to the Grand Egyptian Museum which will be inaugurated later this year.

Again I have to say why the government thinks it is a good idea to empty the Egyptian Museum of Tahrir from all or almost all the famous and important pieces when Egypt got hundreds of thousands of antiquities pieces that are unseen before and need to be displayed at Grand Egyptian Museum.

#11Feb : Al-Bashir to the ICC for crimes in Darfur

Today 11 February 2020 and it marks the ninth anniversary of that event that my generation and other generations in Egypt and the Arab world won’t forget: Mubarak stepping down after 30 years of rule in Egypt.
It was the magical moment that we touched the seventh heaven for real as Egyptian people regardless of what happened the next day.
It is a day that I and others will remember in a mix of pride, nostalgia and sadness on how things turned to be nine years later.
It started with the usual mix of sad nostalgia in Cairo for certain group and then the news came in the mid of the day from Khartoum to remind us that there could be justice, after all, a sort of justice.

The current Sudanese interim government of Sudan reached a historic agreement with Darfur rebel groups to hand over former president Omar Al-Bashir and two other unnamed officials to the International Crime Court “ICC”.

A file photo for the Arab world's worst war criminals, one is down and the other one is still on the loose thanks

to the international community

It has become a special day in the valley of the Nile.

Seen in Dokki : Another trees massacre for sake of development

The municipality cut the old trees at Soliman Abaza street in Dokki

Another sad and truly unjustified #trees massacre and this time at Soliman Abaza street in Dokki, Giza.

The municipality claims that it is part of some development plan to the Upper Middle-Class street in order to put an end to the parking chaos there !!

I do not understand truly how the government launched a campaign for afforestation in Egypt and at the same time leaves the municipalities continue to cut off old trees like that !! This has to stop if we really care for environment. 

The deal of the century : Feeling angry, helpless and frustrated

I am angry and frustrated.

I already knew that the so-called deal of the century to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Mideast by Trump and his son-in-law administration would be so bad.

I did not expect anything good from it but it still feels like humiliation seeing Trump speaking about “Aqua Mosque” in reference to “Al-Aqsa Mosque” which is the third holiest site for Muslims.

But still, it was like a slap to the face. After all, we got a US president who believes that Arab countries should apologize for fighting Israeli Zionist gangs in 1948 too !!

It is a sad irony to find the current US administration and Israel determine the fate of millions of people without a true real representation of those people aka Palestinians and please do not tell me that the Palestinians did not want to go because since day one Trump and his son-in-law do not’ recognize Palestinian people as humans in the first place.

They do not know or do not even recognize the fundamental fact that the Palestinian people have the right of self-determination.

I feel angry and helpless as Egyptian, Arab, Muslim and above them a human to see the map of Palestine according to that Plan and you find how Palestine dissolves and disappears !!

Palestine and how it is dissolving since 1947 

This is just the tip of the iceberg, I have not gone yet deeper in the 181-pages plan on the White House website.

Needless to say, this anger and frustration are shared by millions of Arabs and Muslims who followed the news Tuesday evening around the globe and you can know that by checking the social media.

Heliopolis’ great trees massacre : Be ready for bridges

“ There are many things to laugh about in Egypt but it is laughter that is close to crying” famous Iraqi medieval poet Al-Mutanabbi once said in one of his poems about Egypt describing in a perfect sense this unique black comedy situation we have had from a long time.

I remember this verse when I read the news about how the current minister of environment Yasmine Fouad decided to designate the month of January in Egypt as the month of afforestation.
The environment ministry launched a nationwide campaign for afforestation called “Be ready for the green” or “Live Green” or as in Arabic “اتحضر للاخضر”

It is never too late to launch such campaign but at the same time, it comes when Cairo’s upscale Heliopolis has witnessed a sad trees genocide.

A before and after photo for a street in Heliopolis
"Ghadeer El-Rafeey"  

In the past three months, the government and Cairo governorate decided to build not less than 9 bridges in what so-called the “Masr El-Gadida or Heliopolis development plan”.
The project is implemented by the army’s Engineering Authority which is racing to finish those bridges as soon as possible as it seems.

The plan included widening the streets in the district turning some of those streets into highways in the heart of residential areas.

To make this happen in 100 days in order to have a rapid achievement, the government and the governorate wiped out almost all the green spaces and garden islands in Heliopolis.

According to the citizens of Heliopolis, not less than 90 Feddans of green spaces were wiped out completely in that plan.

#Jan25 …. in Baghdad … in Beirut and in Cairo

It is 25 January 2020, folks

In Cairo, there is a huge security presence and the police forces are celebrating their national day by distributing flowers and sweets on the public.

There is a huge security alert because on the virtual world, Long time army contractor/one-time actor/whistleblower/political activist in exile Mohamed Ali called for a huge revolution on that day.

Unsurprisingly it did not happen and Ali declared that he quit politics and he will focus on construction as well as his acting career.
Despite the majority of the people know that there will be no anti-regime massive protests, the authorities are worried because last September no one would have imagined that some people would go and chant against the regime after all those years.

Needless to say, the mainstream media is celebrating only the day as the Police National Day while all the TV hosts are cursing the revolution and it is not a shock anymore
There is no big change on how the media covers the media now, in fact, I will be surprised if the mainstream media speaks nicely about the 2011 revolution.

There is sadness and despair that the January revolution did not make it as it should. I am trying not to fall in to this as much as I can “I will be lying if I say I did not”.

For me, the 25 January revolution is not fully dead and it is still alive as part of that thing still going on in our part of the world that the West called “The Arab Spring”.
Here is Baghdad’s Tahrir square rocking with protesters who standing high and firm despite they are facing corrupted political system backed by deadly regional and international powers.