Shoura fire

To my intense surprise, I've just discovered there was a massive fire last week that destroyed an old building in Downtown that houses Egypt's Parliament. (The picture is from Reuters)

While I'm not terribly surprised that it took Egyptian firefighters at least 45 minutes to even reach the scene, I'm very sorry to see such a lovely landmark destroyed.

And I use "to see" loosely, because today I walked right past the site and didn't notice a thing. I don't mean this jokingly - I know Cairo always looks like it's about to crumble - but I'm amazed that I was so locked into my own little world, marching down Qasr Al Aini, that I didn't even notice that the building was destroyed.

Since this is Egypt, of course, the whole thing has turned into politics. Looks like the government censored newspaper coverage of the event - and, coincidentally, some damaging papers may have gone up in flames.

While I was reading about this just now, I found a blog written by a 26-year-old Egyptian woman. Some people posted comments to the effect that the Parliament might have best - and for once - served its people by being in the building during the fire. She was distressed by these comments, and seems to be questioning whether Egyptians love their country anymore - or even view it as theirs.

Excellent questions.