From Inside a Cage

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

From inside the courtroom cage in which he and many other defendants were held, the photographer Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan, started posing as a photographer for his friends in the courtroom earlier today. In the photo at top, it looks like he is snapping shots with an Instamatic; in others he imitates holding up a heavy telephoto lens.

Today brought Shawkan to one more hearing, one more in long line of hearings in which the Egyptian court system has repeatedly postponed starting to hold hearings. Thus, once again, it was announced from the bench today that the trial start would be postponed yet again until May 17, one week. It is a Kafka-esque farce, minus any deeper meaning.

Shawkan is one of more than 700 defendants. Taher Abu el-Nasr, a lawyer affiliated with the case, told the Cairo Post last month that he expects the trial to take a long time until a verdict is issued due to the huge number of defendants: “it might take the court 20-30 sessions to only hear the prosecution witnesses; this is something annoying and exhausting to everyone.”
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Bitter Angels

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“I’m glad I found this meeting,” a newcomer said this morning. “I went to one in” (name of nearby city that is big enough to have a dilapidated downtown) “yesterday and I was scared. I thought my car wouldn’t be there when I left.”

He was not speaking with me. I slowed down my already slow pace to hear the rest, and he supplied it: “You know, because I was the only white person there. I assumed it would be broken into or stolen.” I thought to myself, “Did I really just hear him say that?” I am grateful that racism and sexism and the rest of the hate-filled isms still possess the capacity to surprise me when I encounter them; I am furious every time I am exposed to that level of ugly stupidity, that degree of odious and casual hatred. If he had been speaking with me …

Yeah, and what, Mark? What would you have done?, I imagine someone sarcastically asking me. He was not speaking with me, and I went on with my after-meeting chores, but with my ears tuned to our new racist acquaintance, to hear if he had anything else of note to share about his fears. I do not like that I was shocked into a dull complacency, that I did not speak up.
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Today in History: May 10

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One definition of the word “promontory” is “point of high land over water.” Another would be “great view here.”

The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed with a single golden spike on this date in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, almost 5000 feet above sea level. The rail lines were laid down on a steep incline to such a high elevation because the Great Salt Lake was considered an impediment; the west-to-east Central Pacific line detoured around the lake. Great view, indeed.

Promontory Point was selected by cartographers after conferences in Washington, DC, were held to determine where the Central Pacific line construction (heading east, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains) and the Union Pacific line construction (heading west across the plains, from Omaha, Nebraska) would meet.

The meeting of the rail lines (the “Wedding of the Rails” as newspapers headlined it at the time) was to take place on May 8, but bad weather held the ceremony (photo above) until May 10. Remarkably, the last 10 miles of track had been laid down in only 12 hours to be ready for the May 8 ceremony.
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