Travel: Quft escapes the architecture of time

Al Ahram Weekly (Serene Assir)

Where symbol and reality meet, and the present comes to life, time ceases to run through my fingers. Not only am I out of the city. Once past the final checkpoint on the way to Quft from Luxor -- patience, there are many of them -- the modus operandi of the state exposes itself as a primitive method of administrative control which rudely imposes itself on the beauty of that which is bigger than itself, failing to kill it but making a damn good attempt at hiding it. Not only am I out of the city and the architecture of time, but I am also beyond the reach of lies. Here the sun is the sun, the moon is the moon, and humans still remember how to feed themselves without killing others for it.

Sadly I too have made the mistake before of qualifying travel to Upper Egypt as a journey into the past -- as though the present, past and future were technological constructs, and as though the measure of time was merely advancement further and further into the pit of capital.

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