The Lack of Personal Space

I have been out of Cairo for four years now, and when I went to the city this year, I felt as if I was in a cage!! From the pollution to the dirtiness to the crowding of the city, one thing caught my attention more than the other vast disasters that Cairo suffers from, was the lack of personal space.

I mean you can’t walk in the street without people hitting your shoulder as they walk, and this seems to be a very common behavior, that no one stops to apologize and it seems that no one asks for such an apology. It’s as if people have lost the feeling of the sacredness of their bodies and of other people’s bodies as well.
They allow themselves to push you to pass or knock on your shoulder to urge you to move faster.

The public transport is another nightmare. People are canned like sardines, sitting so close like intimate friends, and it seems that no body is disturbed by the fact that in order to reach the door when your bus stop comes, you have to touch at least 20 passengers!! And by “touch” I don’t mean a quick contact of shoulders, which is normal given the level of crowdedness, but that actually your whole body gets in touch with the queues of passengers as you struggle to reach the door before the bus moves again.

I know it has always been crowded in Cairo, especially in public transportation, but what astonishes me is that no body seems bothered with it!! They don’t even notice this.

And it’s not only your “skin” that is violated, it’s your ears and your nose too. I mean you are forced to know personal details about people sitting by your side in the underground for example, as every body is talking loudly with each other.

People are violating your personal space all the time by the very loud mobile ring tones, the overly loud cassette players, the deafening microphones in mosques transmitting the whole prayer procedures and especially the Friday ceremony,…etc.

I remember one of my professors at college saying that “personal space” is actually an original human right , and I just hope that people in streets of Cairo start recognizing and claiming this right.