To Egypt, with love
مصر التي في خاطري و في فمي ، أحبها من كل روحي ودمي
As I sat glued to my TV screen, staring in wide-eyed awe at the developments in Egypt, it occurred to me that it was only three weeks ago that I had jokingly waved goodbye at the Cairo sun before boarding my flight back to London. I never imagined that Egyptians would be making history in my absence, or that the Egypt I hope to return to soon inshAllah will be very different from the Egypt I left behind.
It has been difficult over the past few days to sift through the sheer volume of conflicting thoughts and emotions and reconcile the goosebumps running down my spine with the tears welling up in my eyes. Pride, pain, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and grief had all been not so neatly packed and delivered in a single bird’s eye view of Tahrir Square. A couple of days ago my flatmate asked me which of these emotions I felt most strongly. Unable to shake the sound of fear in the voices of my family and friends back home or the images of the mothers weeping over their dead, the armored tanks patrolling the streets and the familiar landscape of Cairo going up in smoke and flames, my heart was aching with grief over what was lost and anxiety over what was yet to come.
But yesterday, the overwhelming emotion was pride. For years, Egyptians have been accused of being passive, apathetic citizens, hoping for change, but too afraid to make it happen. Yet in only a matter of days, decades of “walking close to the wall” melted away to reveal a determined, resilient people. To borrow a phrase from a Model Arab League conference at AUC, Egyptians finally decided to “veto the apathy.” Not only have they been unwavering in their demand for a dignified life, but they have displayed a collective solidarity that would make anyone proud to be Egyptian.
It warmed my heart to hear how in the absence of the police, youth were creating neighborhood watches to safeguard the streets against looters and criminals; how people formed a barricade around the Egyptian Museum to protect our history; how they took it upon themselves to keep the streets clean; and how they offered free food and medical care to sustain the protestors. In this inspiring video by the Daily News Egypt, I saw youth display a sense of pride and ownership that I had never witnessed before. It was then that I realized that the cities and places I cherish may have gone up in flames, but the spirit of my people had been mended, not broken.
I felt this same sense of empowerment myself when I joined a demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy on Saturday. It was possibly the only moment throughout the past week when I didn’t feel helpless and isolated. I reflected on how easy it was for me to protest compared to those to whom protest meant the possibility that they would not make it home in one piece. As I effortlessly snapped hundreds of photos in plain view of the London police, I remembered how as a student journalist in Cairo I was not allowed to take pictures of the April 6 protest of 2008.
Protesting in front of the Egyptian embassy in London on January 29, 2011.
And now the entire world is tuning in to watch potentially one million people march from Tahrir Square to the Presidential Palace to demand the resignation of President Mubarak. Israeli officials, who made the stupid mistake of expressing their support for the Mubarak regime and creating even more incentive for people to overthrow him, will be sweating profusely at the thought of another unfriendly neighbor in the Middle East. What both Israel and the US fail to recognize is that this is a situation they can neither control nor manage through any amount of political pressure. That Mubarak has to go is no longer even debatable, and this is reflected in the shifting international rhetoric that has moved from talk of “dialogue” to that of “transition.” His delayed responses to the escalating unrest have not only been ludicrous, but too little, too late. And while some believe an end to the protests to be the solution to the worrisome political, economic and security situation in Egypt, this will not and cannot happen without his departure. That he is still stubbornly clinging onto power is in fact mind-boggling.
The most difficult question to answer is what happens next. The long-standing idea that it’s either Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood has been refuted by the grassroots and pluralist nature of this movement. My hope is that it will bring about a real, positive change and that the Egyptian people, as well as their political leaders, will be able to maintain their spirit of unity in the face of the difficult times ahead.
Only one thing I know for sure: I should not have waved goodbye to the Cairo sun as I was boarding my flight back to London; I should have waved goodbye to the Egypt I had always known, and prayed for a better Egypt to embrace me when I return.
