in this part of the world literacy is about 40%. for adults. in every family odds are only one parent can read the newspaper, if any. i am white, so where i come from, people throw fits if that percentile drops significantly under a full, nice, round hundred. if it goes down a few percents in a year, the ministry of education is getting sacked most likely. but not here. the russians had about that rate back in 1880. in rome it hasnt been this low since likely 100ish bc. in athens, probably 500ish bc. ironically, in egypt they invented one of the oldest known ways to write.
people here can not read maps. it is sad to see how a cab driver’s expression suddenly lights up when, after a good five minutes of scanning the piece of paper, he realises the large strip of blue down the middle labelled the nile is actually an image of the river. simply the concept that you can have the likeliness of an entire town drawn on a piece of paper and then never ever be lost is beyond the obvious for your common man of the streets. oft times beyond the believable. ironically, egypt holds a good claim to having invented mapmaking, although it might have been the greeks or the phoenicians, but from my meager knowledge i am inclined to think it was first dreamed up here.
i was walking back to my appartment and by a lamp post sat a girl, maybe 6, maybe 7, selling paper napkins. there are beggars here as anywhere else, but most oftenly people try to do something usefull, no matter how modest or humble. they will shine your shoes. they will carry your bags. they would probably give me piggy bank rides, if i figured how to ask in arabic. but a six year old girl with curly hair is not able to do any of that. so she sells paper napkins, sitting on a rag under a lamp post.
children are probably frequently hungry here, and money is never enough because your average family has 6, or 7, or 8 children, and there is no way anyone could afford that many even if they were rich. which around here means maybe a thousand or two thousands dollars. i heard the government is trying to promote a different style of life, but their imams insist allah does not condone condoms. so allah condones all the human misery instead. which is all the better, because the poorer people are, the hungrier and the more miserable, the more they will credit religions, and their blind zealots.
children anywhere will run and scream and play, and whether they are hungry or not, wearing rags or not, whether the rack of toys just fell on them or their father just gave them a good belt whooping is not all that important. sometimes they will be hungry enough, or cold enough, or beaten up enough so they stop playing and just sit in a corner, but that was not really the case.
this girl was sitting there quietly with a worn book and a scrap of paper and was writing arabic in a hand about as shaky as mine. she was learning to write.
in this poor country that has forgotten how to make maps but still tries to sell me papyrus on every street corner, in spite of the mice and the rats and the ferrets and the musquitos and the garbage everywhere, a six year old girl is sitting under a lamp post and teaching herself to write.
it is close to midnight, the weather is warm, the sky clear and i am overcome.
