The Night Train to Luxor
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How the world really works. These despatches come from: Egypt, where a former military intelligence officer is now firmly in control of the presidency and awaits the election of the kind of parliament from which seldom is heard a discouraging word; China - its president is about to pay a state visit to Britain. At home, his press relations staff are working hard to ensure foreign journalists toe the party line; South Sudan - can a city vanish? Yes it can, according to our correspondent who's just been to Malakal, once the country's lively second city; Australia – it can be fifty degrees centigrade in the Simpson Desert, a landscape virtually untouched by human hand. So why would anyone choose to go there, accompanied by a camel? And Afghanistan – a story about the sound of music, and of hope, amid the din of Kabul.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | And here to introduce it is Kate A.D. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello. Today, anarchy and more at Cairo Station as the night train to Luxor prepares to depart. |
| 0:16.0 | A guided tour of South Sudan's second city, once a thriving bustling place, |
| 0:21.0 | today it's empty. The propaganda department's hard at work as the |
| 0:25.9 | Chinese leader gets ready for dinner at Buckingham Palace. And the Australian |
| 0:30.6 | desert they call the entrance to hell where there was a curious |
| 0:34.6 | camel called Claude. When Egyptians rallied to oust President Mubarak in |
| 0:40.7 | 2011 one of their primary grudges was the sense that Egypt was a Mr. |
| 0:43.9 | In 2011, one of their primary grudges was the sense that Egypt was a dictatorship with only a facade of |
| 0:46.7 | parliamentary democracy. |
| 0:48.8 | A country where the President set the course and politicians just said yes. But the years since have been |
| 0:54.8 | even stormier. There's been a succession of plebiscites, mass demonstrations and |
| 0:59.2 | electoral coups. And then President Abdelfata al-Cisi and the military reimposed the familiar pattern. |
| 1:07.0 | Tomorrow Egyptians begin voting for a new parliament, but it'll be one without a coordinated opposition. |
| 1:13.2 | So will the new assembly do nothing but rubber stamp the plans of the President and his ruling |
| 1:17.9 | elite? |
| 1:18.9 | Kevin Connolly was in Cairo earlier this week looking for clues. |
| 1:24.1 | The yellowish light of a thousand forty watt bulbs hangs over the old railway station like a |
| 1:29.3 | grimy tarpaulin. |
| 1:31.6 | Just beyond the glow of that dull tobacco-tinged mantle, the greasy gray air of |
| 1:36.6 | the Cairo evening stirs sullenly in the breeze. It's almost time to go. Train doors are slammed and tickets checked and sweet sludgy |
... |
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