A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Mubarak is Back in Cairo

Husni Mubarak returned to Cairo earlier today after 38 days in Sharm al-Sheikh, just when speculation about his health was reaching a high pitch again. (Link is in Arabic.) He also met there with Abu Mazen (Mahmoud ‘Abbas), and will apparently soon be giving his postponed May Day address to the nation.

Now for those who read my post of yesterday, based on Egyptian blogger Zeinobia's astute observation, you may notice that in the first picture here, the left arm and hand are in the same position as in all the other recent summit photos.

On the other hand, the picture on Al-Ahram's web page (rotating, so it may not appear at first click) is a bit different:

Here, he clearly seems to be gesturing with the left hand, though it's still held at about the same angle and position.

For those who don't read the comments on these posts, I should note that commenter "A", on my earlier post on the issue, brilliantly noted that "they'll eventually be forced to release pictures of Mubarak armwrestling Omar Suleiman." Well, he isn't exactly arm wrestling Abu Mazen, but he is gesturing.

But it still looks stiff. I know we're playing the game the Kremlinologists used to play to figure out how nearly dead Leonid Brezhnev was, but remember, an Egyptian blogger started this discussion, not I.

3 comments:

LJ Marczak said...

From the reports I've seen President Mubarak had his gallbladder removed.

Often following that procedure a catheter is inserted to drain bile. And/or another to provide an aid to bladder functions.

One would expect recovery in an 82 year old to take a bit longer than someone younger. And no doubt at 82 even a simple procedure is more serious.

But could he just be favoring one side to avoid pain? Or to avoid moving an attached catheter/bag?

Some info on gallbladder removal from the Internet.

http://www.healthsquare.com/mc/fgmc6007.htm

Anonymous said...

Yeah, ok. But it is still not more interesting than this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0504/Surfing-the-Blue-Line-between-Israel-and-Hezbollah

Michael Collins Dunn said...

Anonymous: I agree, but what took the CSM so long? I posted on surfing the Middle East and "Surfing with Nasrallah" months ago:


http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0504/Surfing-the-Blue-Line-between-Israel-and-Hezbollah

http://mideasti.blogspot.com/2009/12/surfing-with-nasrallah.html