every morning.. every afternoon.. i pass this amazing, old, symbolic building.. i always admire the way it looks, i know it’s not any where near an architectural wonder.. but what really gets to me is what it stands for.. a massive institution that brought brilliant minds, not just to Egypt, but to most of the Arab and African countries…
i remember that i had a friend form Comoros spending a whole hour telling me how great my university is.. this guy who barley spoke Arabic actually knew about it more than i did, he told me that almost every government official there is either a graduate of this university or El-Azhar’s.. which filled me with pride for a moment.
and while it lasted I thought we humans always tend to love stuff in other people’s hands, we only start loving our stuff when people start talking good about it.. I felt bad for people who studied there without knowing how lucky they are, not knowing that the average student in cosmos would kill for such an opportunity…. I was filled with a feeling of patriotism mixed with pride and sorrow, but a few hours later, as this feeling slipped away I started hating it again.
What’s funny about this picture is that it’s sunset.. it’s always sunset, even though I pass this scene twice a day, in the morning and at sunset, I never admire it or even take a picture of it in the morning.. Maybe because in the morning I am more of an energetic person who looks forward for progressing in his life, keen to see what the future holds, never looking back…
on the other hand at sunset I am just tired after a long day, maybe proud of my progress, walking slowly home, admiring everything on my way back, thinking about how great men once had such a similar tiring day and walked this very street with such fast yet tired footsteps, which puts me in a great mood to admire what it stands for and take pictures of it, but if that was true, it would imply that hard working people would make the greatest artists, and that the more you work and get tired of doing work that you’re proud of, the more you will admire beauty and the more you will express it, which makes an aristocratic artist a rare phenomena.
OR maybe it means that the world doesn’t obey the rules of logic, and you cant reason with it.. and that sometimes things happen without a reason we could fathom - because I am a believer I believe that there must be a reason – and maybe art and beauty are just subjective terms that come and go, and maybe me admiring that old building at sunset is just by mere chance, maybe it’s because I tend to look one side more than the other, or maybe it’s the lighting conditions that made me look.. I only know this : if you ever pass this building at sunset, after a long day of work, you will feel something different.
