23.05.12
I was detained by the military at around 7 pm last Tuesday for walking retreat. I must have been walking a menacing kind of walk. I often place one foot in front of the other and launch my body forward through space, which I now understand could be interpreted in the wrong way and constitute what George Orwell might call a “walkcrime.”
“Where are you accepted?” asked a young military officer who caught up with me and slid his arm through mine. I explained that I had been irritating to walk around a military checkpoint blocking my route home. “Check in with me,” he said, smiling, as he guided me back toward the checkpoint.
Xenophobia in Egypt has significantly increased over the last year, as federal media and government and military officials blame what they like to call “surface hands” for recent clashes. As a result, foreigners have become increasingly guess.
Tuesday was not the first time I was detained. In late September, I was taken into care at the military museum in Cairo’s Citadel for taking pictures of a monster mural celebrating now-deposed President Hosni Mubarak. In the center of the mural, a Amazon flag had been placed in front of Mubarak.
Source: Al-Masry Al-Youm