I’m probably leaning on the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., far too often these skitzy days, but the man still brings us hope.  When he so confidently intoned, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice,” he surely must have had August/2010 in mind.

Sunday, August 1.  The Washington Post ignores the serial ethical transgressions of DC Mayor-for-Hype Adrian Fenty, endorses him for re-election, and assures us that City Council Chair Vince Gray will be elected in November to replace him.  Goodbye insouciant adolescence, hello mature moxie. (More)

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In recognition of President Obama’s historic trip to, and speech in Cairo, I offer this little short story, which was just named one of 10 runnersup in the annual Potomac Review fiction competition. Good deeds can change history, don’t you think?

Behold, the Raisin!
by Ray Abernathy

Cairo. Everything is moving. Small, square Russian cars, junkers all, speeding down the broad boulevard next to the Nile, slowing neither for traffic circles nor for pedestrians dodging in and out of lanes. Young men riding cranky bicycles past crumbling French, Soviet and Italianate buildings, right hands gripping handlebars, left hands balancing wide wooden trays of precious flatbread. A bus careens wildly around a tiny girl riding side-saddle astride a donkey, the donkey piled 20 feet high with used tires, the girl furiously beating the slow-moving animal with a stick. Two black armored personnel carriers with no windows, only slits for rifles, lumber off the boulevard into the Garden City district, crawl up narrow streets and come to a stop at the back entrance to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia just as two identical vehicles leave. A boy of twelve skips down the walk of an apartment building, crosses the street, pulls himself up by the gun slits on one of the carriers, sticks his tongue out at the soldiers inside and greets them with the refrain from his favorite cartoon show: “Yabba-dabba-do.” The soldiers, most of them little older than children themselves laugh and reply, “da-da-da-da …. da-da-da-da ….dadadadadadadooo.” (More)

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This is a crosspost from the Solidarity Center.

In a historic move for the Egyptian labor movement, the 270,000-member Real Estate Tax Authority (RETA) Union will become Egypt’s first independent union, reports the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), a partner of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.

Yesterday, more than 300 representatives of the RETA union’s General Assembly gathered at Egypt’s Ministry of Manpower in Cairo to submit their application to become the first independent union in Egypt. After a five-hour protest followed by intense negotiations, the Minister of the Labor Force agreed to accept the petition, a precedent-setting move that establishes RETA as Egypt’s first independent union. (More)

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Behold, the Raisin

by Ray Abernathy

Cairo. Everything is moving. Small, square Russian cars, junkers all, speeding down the broad boulevard next to the Nile, slowing neither for traffic circles nor for pedestrians dodging in and out of lanes. Young men riding cranky bicycles past crumbling French, Soviet and Italianate buildings, right hands gripping handlebars, left hands balancing wide wooden trays of precious flatbread. A bus careens wildly around a tiny girl riding side-saddle astride a donkey, the donkey piled 20 feet high with used tires, the girl furiously beating the slow-moving animal with a stick. Two black armored personnel carriers with no windows, only slits for rifles, lumber off the boulevard into the Garden City district, crawl up narrow streets and come to a stop at the back entrance to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia just as two identical vehicles leave. A boy of twelve skips down the walk of an apartment building, crosses the street, pulls himself up by the gun slits on one of the carriers, sticks his tongue out at the soldiers inside and greets them with the refrain from his favorite cartoon show: “Yabba-dabba-do.” The soldiers, most of them little older than children themselves laugh and reply, “da-da-da-da …. da-da-da-da ….dadadadadadadooo.” (More)

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The last time I used this space to promote a book signing at Politics and Prose bookstore, only three people showed up and I was, well, mortified. Please don’t embarrass me internationally by failing to join me this Friday night, October 24 at 7 p.m. at P&P when the courageous Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany reads from, comments on and signs his new book Chicago (Harper Collins). (Politics and Prose is located at 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW in Washington, DC.) P&P says Al-Aswany, “Employs the same narrative structure that was so effective in The Yacoubian Building. These linked stories focus on the physicians in the Histology Department of a Chicago hospital. The heavy hand of Egyptian security threatens several of the characters — even in the United States.” (More)

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What a week of surprises! First, Castro resigns after 50 years. Then Obama wins his tenth primary in a row. Oil tops $100 a barrel. And Egypt turns out the be a land of milk and honey, rather than the depressed, decrepit dictatorship we all thought it was. (More)

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Kamal Abbas, Gamal Mubarak and Ibrahim Eissa are all their early forties.  All three are deeply involved in the debate over the future of Egypt.  All three have dedicated followings.  By this time next year, Gamal probably will be president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, having been boosted there by the heavy hand of his father, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the military strongman who has run the country as a closely-held dictatorship for the past 27 years. Kamal and Ibrahim will most likely be serving time in Egypt’s hellish prison system, sent there by the same heavy hand for opposing Gamal’s ascension to power. (More)

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CAIRO — This is a city where things are not always what they seem to be. Take President Hosni Mubarak (please, some might add). Mubarak is regularly pummeled in the opposition press as an 89-year-old faded revolutionary whose time has passed. But even if you don’t speak the language, you can plainly see from the dozens of ten-story banners hung about the city that Mubarak is a hardy, handsome, competent leader of no more than 50. Then there’s the ubiquitous sight of men young and old, rich and poor, who at the end of the day can be seen dozing off on street corners, in hotel lobbies and in better restaurants, seemingly from the pleasing effects of small amounts of hash smoked along with the tobacco in their water pipes. Not true, as any one of them will tell you. The noxious odor comes not from hash, but from sprinklings of rosemary, thyme, mint and other herbs. Then there are the thousands of young boys and girls who appear to be working as child laborers in hundreds of carpet and rug plants across Egypt. Caution: Don’t you believe it. (More)

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