'Black Coffee' a Hit in Cairo

Murder, drowning and solitary death bring lots of laughs in the current production of Q'ahwa Sada playing in Cairo.  The play, which translates to Black Coffee, was supposed to close after 30 days in November, but instead has become a huge hit at the Artistic Creativity Center.  The play is a series of 12 vignettes satirizing the ills of contemporary Egyptian life.  Check out a full article about it here.   

Cairo's 'Radio Muezzin' Hits Berlin

Conceived by Swiss director, Stefan Kaegi, Radio Muezzin is a one-act docu-drama performed in Arabic with subtitles. The concept arose after a decision by Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, Egyptian minister of religious endowments in 2004. Zaqzouq announced that the noise disturbance caused by Cairo’s hundreds of muezzins leading the daily calls to prayer at different times and over fuzzy loudspeakers was becoming too much for citizens to bear. It was determined that the ministry would choose the 30 best muezzins to broadcast the call over a radio channel. Read the full article from the NYTimes here.

Babylon & Beyond: Spotlight-Egypt

Read this great article on the LATimes blog about the new play Coffee, No Sugar that is raising eyebrows in Egypt for it criticism of the current culture.

Fire at Egypt's National Theatre

The Associated Press
Saturday, September 27, 2008

CAIRO, Egypt: A fire destroyed the main hall of Egypt's National Theater in the heart of the downtown Cairo Saturday, wounding three firefighters, a civil defense officer said.Billowing white smoke filled the busy Ataba Square just after sunset as 22 engines responded to the alarms. Dozens of riot police also deployed to keep back onlookers. A major general with the civil defense on the scene described the fire as "almost contained," after high winds briefly drove flames into neighboring shops and buildings. Three firefighters were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. The official smoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Brig. Gen. Nasr Zakaria of the civil defense operations room told the state MENA news agency that the fire began with an electrical short that caused an explosion in the theater's air conditioning system. The fire started just before the sunset evening meal during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan while workers were performing maintenance on theater's electrical systems. "There was a big blast, then smoke started rising from the roof," said Mahmoud Osman, the owner of a shop across the square. "Then flames engulfed the whole roof area and damaged parts of the wall."

The theater was original built in 1935, but had been recently renovated.The building would have been practically deserted due to the evening meal, but was scheduled to perform popular poetry recitations later on that evening. In August, Egypt's upper house of parliament was devastated by massive fire, also in the downtown area. That fire provoked popular outrage at the incompetence of firefighters and it was described as the latest failing of a government unable to stem rising prices of basic staples. Press reports at the time focused on poor training of firefighters and the absence of sprinklers or a fire management plan for the building — features which are rare throughout Egypt, where safety rules are nonexistent or lax. Few buildings in Cairo even have smoke alarms.

Negative Views Of U.S. Still Strong in Arab World

A new survey, conducted by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, finds that 8 out of 10 Arabs have unfavorable views of the United States. Polling 4000 respondents living in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, 80% said their opinions were based on the policies of the U.S. government, not by American values or culture. The poll also looked at some public diplomacy efforts and found that viewership of the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra TV service remains at 2%, while Al Jazeera receives 53% of Arab audiences.