Since I've already said all that I've been needing to say about the topic that has dominated this blog for the past week or so, I've decided to shift gears a bit and tackle a new issue that has recently come to my attention.
In my recent trip to Cairo (Egypt's capital, in case anyone was wondering), something interesting came to my attention. As I stood at the top of the highest hill in the Al-Azhar Park and gazed at all of Cairo, one thing became incredibly clear to me: the unbelievably obvious distinction between the poor and the rich within the city.
To my left, I could see the Cairo Tower, the Nile-view 5-star luxury hotels, and the richest and most upper-class neighborhoods of Cairo. To my right, however, I could see the most miserable, pathetic looking "houses" - if they could even be called that - I had ever witnessed in my whole life. The cemeteries had become homes to the homeless, the slums were so filthy and germ infested that I could literally smell them from that distance.
As I drove across the 6th of October bridge entering Zamalek Island (The equivalent of New York's Upper East side or 5th Avenue) I was glad to see that Cairo had such a beautifully decorated place, with meadows, parks, and all the world's luxuries. Past the island and accross the greenery, I was bombarded with unmistakable stench of urine, and horse feces, which marked the entrance of the place of residence of the most wretched people to ever walk the Earth, where a room as big as a prison cell would have to fit 15 people or more at a time, where people slept on the floor, and played only with the rats that shared their home.
What amazed me was not that there were both rich and poor, but the fact that the difference was so incredibly obvious, that the two worlds, although practically neighbors, have never collided with one another, that people can actually be content in living the way they do in the slums, or be able to live in their luxury duplexes with an eye-opening view of Cairo's cemetery homes in the distance.
In the picture I've provided with this post, you can admire the best of both worlds. At a closer distance, you can see Cairo's most despicable slums. Further back, towards the end, near the crsytal blue sky, you can see the luxury residential towers, the Cairo tower to the left, and a few government institutions located by the Nile.
