Cairo, the 5th March, 2011

Self defense weapons and such...

You have to laugh about it, otherwise you ll go "potty" *expression of my dear friend and teacher Suzanna, meaning "crazy".

Since I have arrived to Cairo I faced several pains and tribulations. It was not one single shock, they were many and one worse than the other...

To add to these parade of God s ironic tests to my faith and survival skills, there are another details of this city s life that are worth mentioning, if only as a stress releaser for me!

Here are some goodies I am learning to adjust to!

Police has disappeared from the streets of Cairo, leaving our protection for ourselves - and God, obviously or not!- and to the army tanks that watch us with placid smiles without intervening if someone gets hurt in front of them. It is not their jobs to protect the civils, so it is said.

And where is the police to protect the people of this huge city where there still are thousands of criminal recently released from prisons by ex president Hosny Mubarak?!

The criminals released in an attempt to undermine the Revolution are all around town, free and joyous, stealing and attacking whoever they wish with no opposition.

This might be some kind of weird idea of patriotism but I just see it as plain cruelty!

According to this strange, surreal reality, it is not strange that a friend has passed on a self defense spray for me to throw at the eyes of potential attackers.

You spray it on their eyes and they become blind, temporarily or not.

My own defense spray to blind criminals - or impulsive individuals who might be unlucky enough to give me a crossed word or start a heated discussion in the street- has a comical detail to it. We are in Egypt, after all!

We may be in a different Egypt - after the 25th January - but it is still Egypt. Some craziness and comical details are attached to it, no matter how many revolutions may happen in this country.

My defense spray says it is for "WOMEN and MEM". Not "MEN" but "MEM".

And who cares about ortographical accurancy when we go about our lives in the streets and we have to defend ourselves from heavily armed criminals with our own hands?!

The craziest thing is that I still laugh at all this. I DO! And I ve said it very often...part of me has become egyptian.