Kites fly over Nile amid pandemic
Cairo, Jul 3 (efe-epa).- Every evening just before sunset thousands of kites fill Cairo’s skies and soar over the Nile.
It has become a welcome escape for people living in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic in the Egyptian capital.
Every evening since the coronavirus outbreak hit the country, 20-year-old Shamy Ezza takes out a kite he bought for 80 Egyptian pounds (about $5).
The kite, made of plastic bags and wooden sticks, rises over the waters of the Nile from the top of the Cairo University Bridge, in the heart of the city.
The young man can finally relax after a 12-hour shift at a car repair shop.
“The virus has not only affected work but also freedom because I have no money and without money, nothing is easy,” Ezza tells Efe.
“I enjoy it when the kite is in the air, flying free. I feel free like it. I’m not happy without it because life is difficult,” he laments as his kite is lost among the countless others that cover the sky above the Nile.
There are all sorts of shapes, colours and decorations on the kites and some of them are even equipped with lights on their struts that illuminates them after the sun goes down.
Yaser Abdelnabi has three kites that he has designed: one with the face of Liverpool’s Egyptian star Mohamed Salah, another with a drawing of the Chucky doll from the horror film and one bearing the image of the character Leonidas from the movie 300.
He tells Efe that he was a fan of kites when he was little and now, at 24, he has rekindled his hobby because lockdown has forced all the cafes he used to go to with his friends to close.
