"Mamnoo3"

By Nada Moselhy

Yesterday was our visit to the Egyptian Radio and Television building. I remember at the morning waking up very tired, since we didn’t take any rest after we returned from Qatar; all am thinking about is that I need more sleep. I couldn’t resist the feeling that I never visited that building before, though it came to my mind that it won’t be that promising like our visit to Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, but still I wanted to see how it looked like.

We arrived, and of course like many other places in Egypt you will always be interrupted by a police man saying to you “You are not allowed to take any pictures” and then as usual everyone asks “why?” and the perfect answer in Arabic is “Mamnoo3” (which means ‘not allowed’). Then what are we doing here?!! No pictures, not that interesting place and over all that we found out as soon as we entered the building that the person we are supposed to meet forgot all about us and he has a meeting!!! We spent like an hour standing waiting for the permissions to be issued for us to enter inside and for someone who can give us a tour.
After everyone was bored and tired of waiting, we entered the building. It seemed like everyone are out of their offices, so either they are not working or they are out to watch us!

We got the chance to take a look at the News studio, which surprisingly to me it’s a nice small studio with many screens in the back of the set that allows to show pictures or videos in the background of the presenter. Then we stepped in to “Good Morning Egypt” set studio, with its colorful setting, too bad we were not allowed to take any pictures in there!
“This was a waste of time” as Alex Moe said. Then the visit was done!! Nothing more to see.