Posts Tagged ‘Cairo Time
News networks may yank female reporters out of Egypt after rape of Lara Logan by Muslim mob
This is expected, and very much worth talking about: news networks are debating yanking female reporters out of Egypt after the brutal rape of Lara Logan by Muslims, while she was literally standing in a crowded public square covering the chaos in Cairo.
Several months ago, I saw the movie “Cairo Time” with my friend Zara, who had lived in Egypt briefly and who has traveled extensively through Muslim countries. In that movie, Patricia Clarkson plays and American wife of a State Department official, who visits Cairo on a trip to see her husband. One afternoon, in broad daylight, Clarkson’s character gets bored all cooped up in the hotel and decides to take a walk to window shop and explore the neighborhood just a block or so away from where she was staying. Just a few minutes into this stroll, blonde-haired Clarkson attracted a mob of Muslim men who wanted to rape her. The actress telegraphed the terror her character felt in a scene I will never forget…her eyes darted back and forth looking for a way out…sweat beaded up on her forehead as her mind raced to think of some escape…she truly seemed like a woman who knew she was about to be raped if someone or something didn’t save her.
Mercifully, an old shopkeeper spied what was happening through the dirty windows of his store and he pulled Clarkson inside, locking the door behind her, shouting for the mob of men to go away. Still terrified, there was a moment where Clarkson seemed to wonder if the old man would try to rape her too.
At dinner afterwards, Zara told me “he probably would have if they had Viagra in Cairo”…and she wasn’t kidding. She was dead serious. ”This is what it’s like to be a woman in a Muslim country. But, it’s still better than being you, because they’d kill you because you are gay. At least there’d be a hope of maybe living if it’s a woman they are attacking”.
Whenever the Left calls Islam “the religion of peace” or goes on about multiculturalism and how “equally valid” the “culture” in Muslim countries is, the first thing I instinctively think of is the “Cairo Time” rape scene…and from today forward, the next thing I’ll think of is reporter Lara Logan gang-raped in the middle of a crowded square just seconds after filing a televised report during this chaos in Cairo.
It’s horrific, infuriating, and — most frighteningly — just another thing the Left needs you to overlook and pretend doesn’t happen so the “equally valid, religion of peace” meme Democrats seek to institutionalize for Islam can continue unchallenged.
"Cairo Time" is actually worth your time
Yesterday, we ran a piece about the Julie Roberts’ turkey “Eat, Sleep, Fart”, or whatever it’s called, which is one of the worst movies we’ve seen in a while. Claire McCaskill’s super-8 vacation home movies from the early 80s would be more enjoyable to sit through (though, they’d probably involve more farts, knowing ClaireBear…or, as she calls them, “uh-ohs”).
Our friend Zara here in Chicago read our take on the flick and asked us if we wanted to see “Cairo Time” with her at Landmark Century just south of Boystown, and we jumped at the chance because (1) Zara is beyond awesome, (2) it involved meeting her up in Andersonville at her apartment first and having dinner at Reza’s, which we love, and (3) determining if all Hollywood travel movies are by default styled squarely in the “spaghetti harvesting unicorn riding” meme.
Frankly, we didn’t expect much from “Cairo Time”, despite having both Patricia Clarkson and Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine in it. We enjoy both of these people in almost everything they do. Clarkson plays such earthy, interesting characters and that man, whatever his name is, was very good pretending to be in outer space (some times he turns up as a terrorist in various things, and he was the sorta-president of kind-of Iran in the last season of 24, we think).
We thought the movie would be like “Eat, Sleep, Fart”, and prattle on about how terrible America is, and how wonderful filthy places far away are, crammed full of people begging, stealing, and murdering, with terrible plutocratic governments bleeding their people dry. Surprisingly, this was not the case for “Cairo Time”.
We’re not going to talk AT ALL about the plot, though there would have to be something wrong with you if you couldn’t figure out it’s about romance in the capital of Egypt. Because it’s not a mainstream Hollywood movie, the pacing was slow, and was really a character study of the woman Clarkson played, as she was separated from her husband by various circumstances and left on her own in Cairo to explore.
“Exploration” was an overindulged, narcissistic theme of “Eat, Sleep, Fart”, but this was not “explore” in the sense of “finding yourself”. It was “exploring” in the sense of being a stranger in a strange land and taking in the overwhelmingly alien culture around you.
That’s what we love most about travel, though we tend to focus on exploring the greatness that is the United States. We love dropping into a new part of the country, like we did in 27 states during the 2008 campaign, and finding all the local differences, learning how people do things, and seeing what novel treats and surprises they had to offer. In going to all these places, we learned a lot about our fellow Americans, but even more so about ourselves. The same was true for Clarkson in this movie, as she found herself confronted by the bluntness of Egypt.
Long gone are the charms and wonders of the pharaohs, and the film didn’t shy away from the oppressiveness, misogyny, and general craziness of Islam. In one of the first moments in the film, Clarkson is sweltering in a car zooming through the city, and she’s wearing a light button-down shirt and shorts, with her long blond hair blowing in the breeze out the window. The car passes countless women wrapped up in sheets and towels like mummies, wearing the Muslim burquas and hajibs and other instruments of textile torture. They’re all sweating profusely, looking like they are going to pass out from heatstroke, while the men around them galavant around in shorts, tank tops, and whatever they want to wear. Clarkson asks why the women have to be wrapped up like that, and her Muslim driver just shrugs and says, “They’re used to it. They like it”.
We’ve always wondered what it’s like to be a young Muslim girl, which are allowed to run around wearing normal, sensible things in the heat, who reaches the age of maturity and thus needs to be mummified according to these barbarians. Is it horrifying for these girls to have to walk around under the baking sun wrapped up in black wool? How badly does everyone smell after sweating all day like this? What sadistic man dreamed up this nonsense?
Later in the film, the reason for the mummy wrappings is made clear as Clarkson goes out for a stroll in Cairo, looking in shop windows, as a group of Muslim men gathers behind her, intent on raping her. The men are in their early 20s and behave like a pack of dogs. They rush her, try biting and licking her, and ultimately force her into a shop where a kindly old man chases them away and lets Clarkson regroup and collect herself before heading back to her hotel. The excuse for their behavior, like with everything related to Islam, is that these animals can’t control themselves so it is a woman’s fault for being beautiful and having blond hair that makes them all go crazy.
When Clarkson is told this, in a cafe where men sit around all day, not working, “doing nothing” (as so idolized in the Julia Roberts snoozefest), she corrects the man speaking by saying she’s too old to be beautiful, and that she’s not had young men come after her like that in a very long time. “But you are a woman, this is natural,” is the response given, with the sick implication that it doesn’t matter if a woman is 15 or 85, if she’s walking around Cairo there’s a very good chance a mob of young men will rape her, because anything bipedal with a vagina and a pulse is fair game for sexual violation whenever the urge arises in a mob of unemployed, Muslim thugs.
“They just can’t control themselves and aren’t expected to” is the order of the day.
As people with penises we have to just note, this is not the case. A penis can be a magical and talented thing, but it never, ever has the anatomic ability to take control of a body. The heart may want what it wants, but the penis gets what it gets, and only when the brain tells it to go somewhere or do something. So all of this Lefty hooey about Muslims not having the ability to control their sexual urges or having any accountability for what they do to women is just ridiculous.
This misogynistic attitude towards women is carried out through the rest of the film, with Muslims treating women more or less as things, lower than favored pets but a little higher than wheelbarrows or ice cream machines because at least women can be used for rape, which appears to be something of an intramural sport on the streets of Cairo.
Clarkson is enchanted by the city, and how exotic it is, though, so she doesn’t spend too much time worried about the near-sexual assault. She goes on a boat ride, sees the pyramids, has a picnic with British elitists that could have been served in 1890, takes a train ride, and witnesses a traditional Egyptian wedding (where, oddly, the bride and bride’s mother are dressed as prostitutes and forced to belly dance for all the men in attendance).
But, through it all Clarkson never has that “America’s bad, foreign places are good” attitude that Julia Roberts and so many on the Left have. She explores Cairo, tries to find a way to negotiate its dangers, and lets her imagination run wild with the exoticism of the place…but she never knocks America, and consistently reaffirms that things are different back in the States, and that difference is not a bad thing.
Her daughter in the film just graduated college, lives alone, and is traveling by herself on a break while looking for a job. The Muslims are horrified by this, because they believe that daughter should be wrapped up in sheets somewhere, maybe in the laundry room, locked up in chains until a man can decide what he wants to do with her. Similar control is demanded of Clarkson’s son, who eloped, and the Muslims say he should be disowned and punished, but Clarkson says he needs to be who he is and he’s not under her control anymore. That’s a concept Islam doesn’t seem to understand, that human beings have inherent freedom hard-wired into them, and that at the age of maturity ALL people, regardless of their gender, have the ability to set their own courses and live their own lives.
Fat, gross, dirty men hanging out in coffee shops plotting their next rape shouldn’t be able to keep daughters and wives wrapped up in walking ovens waiting outside in the hot sun, or slaving at home to cook, clean, and prepare for the triumphant return home of these Muslim men.
That’s just ridiculous, and it’s heart-breaking these women allow themselves to be treated this way, in any country. It’s terrifying to think of Islam wanting to bring this nonsense, and Sharia law, to our shores, the way it’s doing in parts of Europe. This is not a culture or society to emulate in any way, shape, or form.
But, the movie “Cairo Time” felt like taking a little trip to Egypt and bearing witness to a lot of this madness, with glimpses of the city and ancient ruins as well.
We left sad to see how little of pharaohic Egypt is really left, and how much Islam dominates a country we’ve always thought it would be interesting to visit. But, instead, we’d rather just go to the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas or visit the Field Museum here in Chicago where they have a great Egyptian exhibit. Maybe we’ll watch clips from “The Ten Commandments” or Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” video on YouTube if we ever need a major Egyptian fix. The Bangles will do on 80s Request Night at Sidetracks as well.
Our friend Zara’s actually been to Egypt, and she said the Nile smells like a sewer and the men are even worse than what was shown in the film. When she went, she was with her brothers and father AND a hired Egyptian guide who carried a club like police here used in old-timey days. And the guide used the club on some of these street thugs on more than one occasion, when they leered too threateningly at Zara or her mother.
“That movie was all the Egypt I ever need again,” she said. “I remember the exotic nature of the place, but thankfully I couldn’t smell it, and I didn’t need to have a 300lb man with me ready to beat off guys who wanted to rape me. So, for $9, I had a better time than I did on that $2,000 vacation”.
That’s money well spent, then, in our book.
