Hunker Down

This morning, on the bus from Maadi to The American University in Cairo’s new campus, located in posh and remote Katemeya, I sat next to John, a teaching colleague and buddy.  The two of us spent the forty-five-minute trip—traffic was good and never got snarled, not even once, or we would have had an even longer conversation—talking about the current political situation in Egypt.

I prefaced my remarks to him by saying I thought this little piece of northeast Africa was on the path taken by Libya and Syria, meaning that it was headed toward a bloody civil war.  My friend wasn’t as pessimistic as I was, though he seemed, as we bounced along on the city’s potholed roads, to find a lot of what I was saying quite convincing.

For the past five days, Egypt, especially Port Said, Suez, and Ismailia, right on down to its massive capital, has been wracked by ugly protests and riots.  The two-year anniversary of the revolution against Mubarak and the court ruling on last year’s football massacre at a match in Port Said, were the sparks that got the bonfire raging, but days later now, the anger has become more diffuse.

Watch Egypt's Morsi Hoped Violence Would Burn Out, Spreads Instead on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The video provides a pretty good overview.  What it doesn’t address is Morsi’s recent attempt to call for dialogue with the opposition, an offer that was unceremoniously rejected.  Now, the country, quite literally, continues to burn as the political sides sit and stare at one another across a great divide. 

The Western media is actually missing a lot of the story.  The local Egyptian TV news coverage is much more immediate and clearly shows the scale of the unrest.  For the past few nights, Azza and I have been sitting together, in front of our flat screen, and watching events unfold in real time.  We’ve seen it all, and heard it all too, as a variety of pundits, mostly “liberals,” relentlessly bash Morsi and his Brotherhood.     

Egypt’s failing economy is the backdrop to all of this craziness.  The currency is being devalued as I write this.  (A month ago, it took 6 Egyptian pounds to buy a dollar, and today, it takes 6.6.)  We’ve seen the results of this devaluation with our own eyes.  When we tried to buy dollars for our Italy trip, we had to go to several currency exchange shops before we could find any greenbacks in stock.  There was panic buying on the street and black marketers were taking advantage of this mood of uncertainty.  My wife, who is a caterer of fine Italian cuisine and thus a serious shopper, has seen a spike in food prices recently.

Things just feel like they’re spiraling out of control or coming unglued, whatever metaphor you want to use.

And now, there’s this sobering pronouncement by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.     

Much Ado about Everything

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the recent protests in response to the film, Innocence of Muslims, or whatever they’re calling that piece of inflammatory garbage.  First of all, those taking place in Cairo have been very small and limited to the environs of the American embassy.  There has been no widespread rioting.  I know this because I live in Maadi, a neighborhood located a few miles from downtown, where there have been no public expressions of anger, at least none that I’ve been aware of.  This means that those actually involved comprise no more than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the eighteen million people (or so) who call this city home. 

On principle, I try to limit my exposure to mainstream Western news media, but I’ve been turning on my TV in recent days to watch France 24.  What I’ve been seeing has been somewhat disappointing.  At one point, the network put together a panel of experts to discuss the situation.  The group consisted of an American, a Dane, and two citizens of France, all of them rather WASPish in their background and outlook.  I listened carefully to everything that they said, trying to see if any of them had ever stepped foot outside their North American-European cocoon.  As far as I could tell none of them ever had. 

I can only imagine what’s being shown on American TV news.  For such an incredibly diverse nation, very few alternative perspectives are ever aired there.  Some would argue that radical Islamists are the biggest threat to America.  Forget that.  Groupthink poses the most potent danger to the health and wellbeing of the nation. 

Religion certainly has played a part in the recent embassy protests in the region, but so has poverty and American foreign policy.  I’m aware that many of my fellow citizens are bound to take issue with such a pronouncement.  What can I say to such people except that the truth sometimes hurts?   

I was born into a fairly traditional family in Texas, a traditional part of the United States.  While growing up, I was taught the old-fashioned lesson that “actions have consequences.”  This certainly has to be true for nations too, doesn’t it? 

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, gloriously marketed as “Shock and Awe,” many warned that such an action would radicalize many in the Middle East.  Of course, there’s also the continued occupation of Afghanistan to consider.  Lately, the use of drones, and all the “collateral damage” that occurs during such strikes, has been capturing the headlines in this part of the world.  I almost forgot to mention America’s longstanding, seemingly unconditional support of Israel, a nation that Jimmy Carter has referred to an “an apartheid state.”  Of course, this list is very far from being complete. 

Along comes a hateful movie and the outrage sparks off.  It’s impossible to look at all this anger, roiling so many different places, without suspecting that other deep-seated grievances are also at play.

I want to finish by sharing a really intelligent letter.  (I wonder if it’s gotten much airplay in Europe and North America.)  Additionally, this Thom Hartmann video provides a new way of thinking about the ongoing instability in this part of the world.  I’ll leave you to have a read and a look. 

Crossing Borders

First of all, kudos to Bill Moyers, a fellow Texan and someone who’s been fighting the good fight for a long time.

Midway through this interview I hit the pause button, opened up a new Firefox browser window, went to The American University in Cairo’s webpage, and did a search to see if the library, at the place where I work, has any of Luis Alberto Urrea’s books.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t.  As soon as I made that sad discovery, I vowed that I would—by hook or by crook—get my hands on some of his work, in the very nearest future, and take a look.

Like the author, I am very much interested in borders.  As a frequent traveler and longtime expatriate, I often cross them.  Doing so takes me to places where people speak languages that are unintelligible and behave in ways that are unfamiliar.  Of course, this exposure to “foreignness” is jarring.  It is also terrible refreshing and very educational. 

Over the years, I’ve published lots of writings, in all sorts of places, lauding the value of travel.  It may sound like an exaggeration, but joining the Peace Corps, back in the mid-90s, saved my life.  It certainly saved my sanity.  Those two years in Poland was my first exposure to life outside the confines of my home country.  The experience opened up my thinking, provided me with the opportunity to grow in all sorts of ways.  It also turned me on to a style of living that was very addictive.      

My American family—as opposed to Azza’s kinfolks, my Egyptian family—lives in Texas.  I go back, once a year, to the Lone Star State to visit everyone and reconnect.  I cherish those trips back.  They give me an opportunity to cross borders—to move between what some might call “the developed world” and a place that’s “developing.”  I always learn more about myself when I move through space and time this way.

Speaking of travel, I see that I’ve made it to the end of this particular entry in my blog.  So, until we meet again… 

Occupy Occupy

Speaking of serendipity, I was getting ready to write about this episode of The World Tomorrow when I happened to run across an interesting sentence in Flight, a novel by Sherman Alexie.  It’s spoken by Justice, an evil boy genius who befriends Zits, the book’s juvenile delinquent, first-person narrator.  Justice says, when speaking to his new best buddy, “Remember, revolution is not about spontaneous combustion.  The true revolutionary must set himself aflame.”

What Justice said reminded me of Julian Assange’s conversation with these Occupy activists.  Of course, I couldn’t help noticing how often they kept referring to “the Arab Spring.”  Living in one of the countries where this “flowering” is taking place, I felt like I wanted to comment on Justice’s quote, the London conversation, and Egypt’s current situation.

What happened last year in Egypt felt like spontaneous combustion, especially since it all transpired so quickly.  When the flames finally died down, the ashes of an old political arrangement could be seen in many different places.

Today’s Egypt is definitely aflame.  In fact, I would say that the country is inflamed.  It’s swollen and fevered.  Now, instead of ashes, we have, once again, a white-hot heat.

Last year, when Mubarak stepped down, I felt energized and enthusiastic.  I wanted to contribute to the making of a new Egypt.  This year, I find that I’m very tired.  The strain of the current uncertainty of things is exhausting.  When I talk with others about Egyptian politics today, I’m reluctant to give my opinion.  I don’t know who is right and who is wrong and which way the country should go.  In short, I feel befuddled and paralyzed.

It occurs to me that revolutions are very romantic in their early stages.  Later on, there is a great potential for tragedy.

Three times this past spring semester, the bus I was on in morning, the one taking me to work at the university, came to a stop on the highway.  That’s because the road, up ahead, was being blocked by a mob of angry, young men, some of whom were throwing stones and generally causing mayhem.  The second time this happened I was sitting next to a visiting professor from Chicago.  I turned to her and said, “It sometimes feels like Egypt is becoming unhinged.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Nearly four years.”

“Well, I’ve been here only one, but I generally get that sense too.”

In the days that followed, I have repeatedly asked myself these questions.  Were these youths doing a good thing (or not) in expressing themselves this way?  What, specifically, were their grievances?  What are people to do when they feel powerless and frustrated?  What is their best course of action?

I wish I knew the answer to these questions.