#30June in Sudan : The protesters say they are here to stay

In case you do not know the Sudanese people are still protesting against the current ruling Transitional Military Council "TMC demanding a civil rule in Sudan and hundreds of thousands rocked the capital and other cities.

Protesters in Khartoum in the 30 June protests from men, women and children "AFP"

The photos speak about it themselves.

From Khartoum by Reuters, the temperature degree in the city was 39℃

Thousands protest in the heart of Khartoum on 30 June 2019 by Reuters 

The fire of Cairo’s Attaba vegetables market : The curse of neglect

I do not like to write these blogposts.

Photo of the fire on Thursday
from Facebook 

Earlier Thursday, a huge fire engulfed Cairo’s old Attaba vegetable market destroying a huge part of it due to the lack of industrial security.

Thankfully no one is harmed in that fire.

According to news reports, the fire started because of some gas cylinder. The fire destroyed many of the shops inside the wooden market in early Thursday morning.

Old wood, extremely hot weather conditions and lack of any means to put of fire can destroy buildings stronger than this.

The initial financial losses according to the Cairo prosecution is estimated by LE 2 million according to Al-Watan Newspaper.

Now, most of the news websites took the news and published scary photos for the huge fire that destroyed several shops inside the market ignored its history.

We found out that this market was originally planned in the time of Khedive Ismail in the 19th century in his vision to turn Cairo into another Paris. He wanted to have modernized markets then. It was designed and built by Austrian architect Julius Franz Pasha.

It was inaugurated in the time of his son Khedive Tawfik. It was inaugurated on  15 December 1892.

The unique gate and roof of the market by Michel Hanna in 2016 

It is registered as a "Building with distinguished architectural style" in the National Organization For Urban Harmony under the number "03220000032" which means it could not be demolished if I am not mistaken.
Here is a fantastic report about what was known as Le Marche De Caire. 

AFCON 2019 : Great opening ceremony and humble football match

The African Cup of Nations 2019 kicked off in Cairo in a very beautiful short opening ceremony.
It was a short, elegant and beautiful show aside from that dancing lady at the start.

Part of the ceremony "Twitter" 

That show highlighted Egypt’s identity from ancient Egypt to Islamic Egypt to African Egypt to Modern Egypt without big dancing shows.

The start of the show "Twitter" 

Crazy elegant fire shows  in the inauguration of  AFCON19
"Fox Sports" 

African identity is celebrated in an elegant way
"Twitter"

You can watch it here from CAF’s official TV channel on YouTube.

Nevertheless, in a very Egyptian tradition, there was a technical problem that created a little controversy in the opening ceremony.

When Israeli media covered Morsi’s death in Cairo

It is sad , it is shameful how the mainstream Egyptian media made international as well as modest local headlines in the past 48 hours on how it covered the death of Egypt’s ousted ex-president Mohamed Morsi.

It is even sadder when you know a correspondent for an Israeli TV channel filmed a news report outside the cemetery of Muslim Brotherhood figures in Nasr City where Morsi was buried early Tuesday and even spoke about the coverage of the death of the 5th president of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Egyptian Press.

Israeli State-TV Kan Arab affairs correspondent Roi Kais filmed a news report outside the cemetery of Muslim Brotherhood figures in the Wafaa wal Amal Cemeteries Complex.

I do not understand Hebrew but I think it is understandable how he highlighted Al-Ahram Newspaper’s coverage on Tuesday. 

I have not seen any local media covering or filming near the cemetery. I saw only photos from AFP and Reuters taken from far away too as far as I could tell.

It started and ended in June for him : Ousted Ex-president Morsi passed away during trial "Updated"

Egypt’s ousted ex-president Mohamed Morsi has passed away in Cairo during his trial on Monday, the Egyptian State TV announced.
A few moments ago, Egypt’s Prosecutor general Nabil Sadek’s office issued its first official statement about the death of the country’s fifth president during his trial.

During his espionage trial in New Cairo, the 68-years-old asked to address the court following the defense of the second and the third defendant in the case.
“The court allowed him to speak and the defendant spoke for five minutes, then the court took a recess,” The statement said.

While in the cage with other defendants, Morsi fainted and collapsed. The statement said that he was then transferred to hospital and it turned out that he passed away when he arrived there at 4:50 PM.

Ousted Ex-president Mohamed Morsi, the fifth president of the Arab Republic of Egypt
behind bars in court (AFP)

The report added that the prosecutor general order a team of prosecution investigators from High State security prosecution and Prosecution general to examine Morsi’s body and to check the CCTV recordings as well as to hear the statements of the defendants and those who attended the incident.

The prosecutor general also delegated a team from Egypt’s forensic authority to prepare a report about his death so it can issue a permit for his burial later.
There are reports that family would be allowed to check his body as a gesture that there is no fool play.

It is unclear how his funeral will be but I do not think it will be a public one or official one.
Most probably it will be held at night quickly with no media.

Mohamed Morsi was standing a trial for conspiring and spying with foreign armed groups aka Hamas during 2011.
It is his retrial actually.
He was sentenced life  “25 years” in prison by the court in May 2015 for conspiring to commit terrorist acts.
He faced several trials and retrials.

According to my observation, it took nearly an hour so the news would find its way to Egyptian local media after he was pronounced dead according to the Prosecutor General’s office.

Updated : 

Mohamed Morsi was buried at a cemetery for the Muslim Brotherhood in Nasr City, Cairo. Only two His sons and wife were allowed to attend the burial according to his lawyer's statement to foreign media.

Egyptian treasures going under hammer : Tut’s partial face at Christie’s along other ancient Egyptian stuff as usual

Egypt’s Ministry of antiquities and Ministry of foreign affairs have called on Christie’s auction house and UNESCO to stop the sale of a quartzite head from a statue believed to be for King Tutankhamen aka Tut.

The call comes after the announcement of Christie’s auction house in London that it is going to sell two Egyptian ancient artifacts in its “The exceptional Sale” on 4 July 2019.
The exceptional sale

The two Egyptian artifacts are partial quartzite head of ancient deity Amon with the features of King Tutankhamen and partial red granite head featuring King Amenhotep III.

It is an exceptional sale indeed and its cherry on the top is none other than partial quartzite head of our boy King Tut by all measures with an expected price tag not less than USD 4 million according to what I have read in the past couple of days

The piece featuring mostly King Tutankhamen in
Christie's 

The partial quartzite head got a broken nose like many ancient Egyptian statues and busts.
In March we found a theory on the reason behind that broken nose syndrome and it has to do with the ancient Egyptians’ beliefs on how statues had got a life force.

It is unclear when that fragmented left Egypt or where it was discovered.

What we know from Christie's that late German Royalty Prinz Wilhelm von Thurn und Taxis acquired it reportedly in the mid-1960s. It is unclear where that German Prince acquired it.
He sold it to Austrian art dealer Joseph Messina for Galerie Kokorian in Vienna, Austria in 1973 or 1974.

Just leave the Syrian investments alone in Egypt …for the sake of the Egyptian economy

Ramadan is over and Egyptian lawyer Samir Sabry is back to business and he has got a new target: Syrian investments in Egypt.
Samir Sabry presented a memo to Egypt’s judiciary demanding the enumeration of the Syrian investments in Egypt.
Sabry claimed that the Syrian investments in Egypt reached according to statics since the start of the “Syrian crisis” by USD 23 billion adding that they own the most important textile and garments as well as “controlling real state developments market in Egyptian neighborhood !!”
Now I do not know from where he got that number of USD 23 billion in Egypt but I know that he copycatted what was mentioned in a Pro-economic Syrian regime website word by word in February 2017 without even checking back whether it is true or wrong.
This is not the first time Sabry demands such a thing from Egyptian authorities.
He presented a memo from a year ago in May 2018 demanding the same thing from Egypt’s prosecutor general and his demand was ignored.

Thanks, Egypt banner in the famous Syrian street in October 

According to the official numbers for real, the Syrian investments increased by 30% in the first 9 months in 2018.
A report published in Al-Watan newspaper in November 2018 says that according to reports and numbers issued by the Egyptian ministry of investment and international cooperation and the ministry of industry and trade the Syrian investments in the first 9 months of 2018 reached USD 69.93 million which is equal to USD 1.2 billion.

It does not feel like Eid in North Sinai

It is the third day of Eid el-Fitr in Egypt. Earlier Friday, Egypt’s ministry of interior announced that its forces in North Sinai killed 8 suspected terrorists or as officially called “terrorist elements” involved in Al-Arish checkpoint attack that place on Wednesday.

This announcement came less than 48 hours of its announcement that security forces killed another 14 suspected terrorists or as officially called “terrorist elements” for their alleged involvement in Wednesday’s attack.

Earlier Wednesday , a group of militant terrorists attacked a security checkpoint called “Batal-14” or “The hero-14” located West of Al-Arish in North Sinai governorate

The security checkpoint was following the ministry of interior.

According to official statement of the interior ministry , at least 8 police personnel were killed in the shootout between those terrorists and the checkpoint.

Five terrorist militants were killed in the shootout.

Later that day Daesh claimed responsibility of  the attack , no surprise here as it claimed most of the attacks in the past five years.

It claimed that it killed 10 policemen in two attacks targeting two different locations yet it only mentioned “Batal-14” and did not mentioned the other one.

Then it released video report about the attack bragging about it.

The video showed the attackers about at least 24 armed young men whose faces were either blurred or masked.

They were all young teenagers as it appeared between the ages of 16 to 20 at most.

A day to remember for Egypt and Egyptian King Mo Salah

Mo Salah carrying the Champions league
Cup "Twitter" 

Egypt is not sleeping tonight, it is celebrating with the City of Liverpool and Liverpool FC fans everywhere. In case you do not know Liverpool FC won Europe’s Champions League for the Sixth time in its history and our Mohamed Salah scored the first goal in the game.
Once again our Mo who comes from a small village in Nile Delta makes history.

Mohamed Salah is the first Egypt to win The Champions League title.
Mohamed Salah is the fifth Africa to win The Champions League title.
Mohamed Salah is the second Arab to win The Champions League title.

And yes We are loud and proud about it, our boy deserves it.

Almost most cafes in Cairo played the game.

It was the main event that gathered all Egyptians around it.

And the night had very beautiful scenes from Madrid.
In his first short TV interview, Salah wondered where his friend and old mentor Mohamed Abu Trika was.

Kodak Agfa Presents : Back to El-Sayida Zeinab Ramadan Market

I know that Ramadan is packing up its bags and is going to leave us within hours but it is never too late to share those couple of photos with you guys.
If you want to have a glimpse of the true spirit of the Holy Month of Ramadan in Egypt, you do not go to upscale neighbourhoods but rather working-class neighbourhoods
If you want to have a glimpse of how local markets celebrate the holy month then there is no better than El-Sayida Zeinab make-shift Ramadan market.

El-Sayida Zeinab's minaret overlooking the make-shift market 

This was not the first time to visit the most famous market when it comes to the Ramadan Lanterns but it was the first time for me to visit the market during Ramadan.
I visited it in 2016 just one night before Ramadan and it was a great experience for me breaking a lot of barriers to me as a shy photographer.

Now According to the sellers, the market got fewer visitors and customers during Ramadan than before Ramadan which is logic if you think about it.

A customer checking the lanterns 

This is the fourth year for Egypt to ban the import of Chinese-made Ramadan lanterns.
In an attempt to preserve the tradition handmade industry of Ramadan lanterns, the government issued a ministerial decree in 2015 to ban the Chinese plastic Ramadan lanterns.