Sometimes it seems that life here is one lifelong show. True, this is a city that never sleeps. No matter how odd the hour, you're bound to find some action going on.
Everyone is doing something, and funnily enough, everyone is watching. We are all performing. Some tumble and fumble as they do so, some perform with confidence or with an air of arrogance. We're the actors and the audience. The life we live has become our own circus, and that is ultimate platform for performance.
A circus in our original vocabulary refers to an incredible show where the performers risk their lives to entertain. It has evolved to a true symbol of showmanship - of performing a task that is extremely difficult and pretending it to be extremely easy.
A circus has its own allure, a power to captivate and thrill. On varying levels, we connect in that manner to this charming city we call Cairo. Cairo is beautiful. It is rich, and it's full of culture, literature, art, history and architecture. It is big, congested, wild, dirty, sexy, dangerous, welcoming, and it has a witty sense of humor. Cairo is a mystery. We live amid way too much madness and chaos and deafening noises. Mix that with the attitude - the unbelievable attitude sometimes.
Cairo has been called a wonder, it never ceases to amaze. All pent-up anger and frustration aside, it is still a sight for sore eyes. There's an abundance of light too; street lights, neon lights, car lights and house lights. Lights that are reflecting off the Nile even. Lights here usually come with plenty of sound, some with beat and rhythm, a lot just plain loud and noisy. The hallmark of the Egyptian street is a combination of cars honking, mobiles ringing, music glaring and people talking and shouting and screaming.
Our life has become a circus, in every possible meaning of the word.
People are doing crazy things by the minute; we must give them credit for creativity, despite the ridiculous and the silly. In a sense, they are all clowns of one form. Clowns that roam around and create havoc. They run rampant in all directions, violating cultural rules and taboos wherever possible. They exaggerate emotions and invert social rules and roles in overly dramatic ways. They are outrageous. Clowns who laugh at themselves; they don't make the joke, they are the joke. Every so often they make you the butt of the joke.
It's not just the clowns; there are other characters that exist in our lives that epitomize circus performers, metaphorically and almost literally. For example, the jugglers. They parade the streets every day. They have mastered patterns of motion amongst physical bodies, and can manipulate these patterns through dexterity and hand-eye coordination to work with or sometimes appear to even defy gravity itself. I'm talking about the micro-bus drivers. They maneuver their way through Cairo's streets, la zig-zag style swerving right and left, sandwiching the micro-bus in the tiny spaces between other cars or buses or trucks, following the street defined driving rules of the booze base religiously, all the while being very focused on spotting the next person to pick up for a ride. With a hand on the horn honking non-stop, and smoking a ciggy, they can chat to the passenger sitting beside them, or on the mobile, or throw a word or a little joke to a fellow driver in the vehicle next to them, keep track of who paid and who hasn't, either on their own or by coordinating with their assistant, sing along to the music they play too loud, swear at the slightest of reasons and yes of course, drive. Regardless, they juggle all of it like a pro. Smooth performance.
In the surreal setting of most circuses, the magician is an unrivaled act. Magicians entertain us and perform the seemingly impossible, using sleight-of-hand and impressive tricks up their sleeve. It's their ruse. Sometimes they are damn smart con artists, who deceive our own eyes. They make a reality out of the illusion. Our very own Egyptian-made street magician is the sayes. He makes one fine street attraction. He's jumping all over the place. He has command, if only of a small part of the road. He grabs your attention, and out of nowhere, in the middle of the tightly-packed lines of cars, creates a spot just the right size for your car, almost magically. He spares you the torment of going around the block multiple times, waiting and hoping for a parking space to materialize before your eyes. So the sayes may not levitate or make a girl vanish; but he does have skills that baffle in the most unusual of ways.
Some of the feats performed in a circus take the audience's emotions to a crescendo. The death-defying stunts of acrobats and trapeze artists who balance tenuously on a narrow strip of rope. They have flexible body movements and a balancing act that requires tremendous concentration. We hold our breath in anticipation. Our own acrobatic daredevils are the men who work to set up billboard ads all over our streets and on areas with relatively high visibility. They deserve to be praised just the same. There is no security for their lives, no safety mattress, and no safety gear. Their simple job to perform a straightforward task of plastering new ads that spreads the word to us about the latest product, service or gig, comes with a high price tag of them risking severe injury. They definitely do offer us something to marvel about.
There is another image that comes to mind when we talk about the circus environment - that of the brave lion tamer. A lion tamer who epitomizes control, wielding little more than a stick and a whip, he manages to bend one of the world's most ferocious beasts to his will. This pandemonium style of life we're living is akin to a lion that is disturbed to wake up to hoards of noisy people, flickering lights, intolerable noise levels and a million shades of ugly and pretty. The lion becomes infuriated and begins to roar very loud.
Cairo has become more restless than ever. Who will tame the lion that is Cairo? Where is the lion tamer in this circus that we live in?