From my new book... Adventures with World Music... 2003... remember?
Today we held our own demonstration in Tahrir Square, in the heart of downtown Cairo, the same square which had been used by close to a hundred-thousand Egyptians a few days earlier to protest the war being waged by America, 'the last surviving superpower.' A decade later the demonstrations which expressed the hopes of the Egyptian youth which became known as ‘The Arab Spring’ were held in this same location.
We did not have an anti-war demonstration. We held a peace and music demonstration. We didn’t have to explain it, really... The Egyptians immediately were thrilled to hear us singing their music and we were surrounded by dozens of smiling, dancing, clapping young men and women. We sang for an hour or more. Kristina danced with young Egyptian women... and men... A three-year-old boy danced exuberantly in the center of the crowd. The old woman with missing teeth pleaded for another verse from Abd El Halim...
At this very same moment, not too far to the east, many people are dying in Baghdad because of the incomprehensibly strange dream-world inhabited by certain 'heads of state.' Really, the Egyptians, polite and accommodating as always, seem as nonplussed, confused, shocked and, yes angry, as you might expect. I think they live more in the moment, most of them, than we do. You don’t see them holding the same tensions in their bodies...!
We couldn't know that in a few days we would be singing Iraqi love songs on the streets of Baghdad while the city was in flames...
