After dinner this evening with friends at Indian Ocean, we walked down Connecticut Avenue to Van Ness, and then up Chancery Center, to the Egyptian embassy. It was a clear, not too cold night, with a bright moon.
I hadn’t yet seen this street, full of new, massive embassies — with the Chinese particularly immense. It’s an all-over-the-place, neither-here-nor-there building, with the vague geometries of a synagogue.
As we walked up the hill to the embassy, a woman wearing the Egyptian flag as a dress passed us; she was surrounded by excited friends, some of whom carried a banner that read WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.
You remember Walk Like an Egyptian.
(This, I know you remember.)
Men with Egyptian flag face paint thanked us for being there and said that tomorrow at one o’clock there will be another gathering.
This one was winding down. There were happy groups of young people, a guy in a Cat in the Hat hat, a child flying the flag, a woman calling up the hill toward the embassy: “Hassan! Yasmeen!”
The floodlit United Arab Emirates embassy, with its big gold dome, was magical. The Egyptian embassy next to it looked like a small version of the woeful Kennedy Center. (Here’s a blog whose first photo shows the UAE embassy; plenty of photos of a recent protest at the Egyptian embassy follow, complete with people holding WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN signs. I guess it’s a thing now.)
We wandered around; a bunch of people dressed in the national colors asked our friend Joe to take their picture. Much laughter.
Happiness everywhere.
I never take for granted living in this city, where you can walk three blocks from your restaurant and, under a white moon, join up for a moment with something unearthly.
February 15th, 2011 at 4:05PM
Thanks for the link to my photo essay on the Egyptian embassy demonstration. I’m relatively new in town and hope to photograph more such events. Keep me posted of anything like it!
February 15th, 2011 at 5:50PM
You’re very welcome, Jimbaux. I’m happy to keep you posted.
Best,
UD