Eye On Egypt Blog

Egyptians rise again

20 November, 2010
Cairo Egypt

It’s violent out there.  Much worse than when the people were fighting Mubarak. But then everyone was expecting a bloody bash sooner or later.

The people were so proud of their peaceful removal of Mubarak.  They were proud of having an army they felt they could trust.

They gave the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) the benefit of the doubt. They waited.

 And they got Maspero.

When the military turned on peaceful Coptic protestor, the people lost faith.

SCAF’s done nothing but block movement. The old emergency laws are still in place. Government indignities still punctuate daily life. Most of the old regime guys are still in positions of power; only a few of the most publicly reviled have been prosecuted.

How insulting can you be?

I’m inspired by these protestors.  They don’t want dictatorship, military or otherwise;  They don’t want a Islamist state and they’re standing up for themselves.

Dark maneuvers

 One theory is that Islamists set this protest up.

Maybe the scary, radical islamists cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood.  After all, the Brotherhood, while moderate in recent years, has a well-known practice of political opportunism. Together they could agree to incite the protest, thus scaring moderate people away from the polls on November 28  and leaving the islamists to win a majority in parliament. 

In another theory, the military allowed the first day of the revolt to go on without their intervention so they could claim the people weren’t ready to rule. 

In either case, the strategies failed.

The square is now filled with people of every persuasion.  They want Field Marshall Tantawi to resign and immediate transfer of power to the people as well as other things that are unrealistic.

That’s what people want.

Amal Sedky Winter, PhD
Cairo, Egypt
www.myeyeonegypt.net

November 20, 2010

Depressed in Egypt: the Coptic demonstration.

Everyone, from cab drivers and street sweepers to doctors and professors is depressed about the disastrous demonstration by the Copts on October 9th in which mostly Christian civilians were shot. The violence against both sides was caused by "unknown forces" still unknown to this day which doesn't say much about military intelligence.

One friend, a Muslim supporting the Coptic demonstration got roughed up. She said trained snipers fired on people from the roofs of buildings. A well-known leader/activist was killed.

Doesn't sound random to me.

Some Christians reactions to the military are surprising. Of course, they are officially and rightfully indignant but privately I have heard some criticize the demonstrators for massing at time of such political tension.

The country is becoming chaotic. Everyone is on strike and there really isn't money to meet their demands for a living wage. The police, many of whom are still in hiding and certainly not back on the streets, are now demonstrating against the minister of interior, el-Essawi, demanding he cleanse the ministry of the previous minister, Habib el Adly, a Mubarak loyalist.

Still, 73% of the population still supports the army. I guess when you haven't any other choice you back the one you have. As one friend said, "The relationship between the Egyptian people and the Army is like a wife and her husband. She knows he's unfaithful but she stays because of the children."

I'm afraid that sums it up.

Amal Sedky Winter, PhD

"Yesterday"

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I feel guilty.  A little.

 

I’d like to think it wasn’t a get-even thing.  But, who can predict how the dark threads in our hearts will wander.

 

But I did have trouble trying to get some photos of the biggest synagogue in Cairo, Gates of Heaven or Shaar Hashamaim. As we pulled up beside the massive neo-Pharonic façade, we found ourselves paralleling a metal barricade and a cluster of Egyptian Army guards:  No pictures of the Jewish house of worship.

 

What’s worse, we couldn’t even go in, even though it was the Sabbath.  The guard told us the building closed at 4:30 “yesterday’s” time.

 

The night before we had turned the clocks back, so our 3:30 was yesterday’s 4:30.  You get the idea.

 

I should have known.  Just over the river from where we live is another pod of army guards protecting the Israeli embassy, camouflaged in a dusty building in the neighborhood.  Same rules.  No pictures.  Although, in this case, one doesn’t even know where to point the camera.

 

Sometimes we chat with the guards.

 

Anyway, today I walked by the green lawns of a park, posed serenely on the banks of the Nile.  A half-dozen women, all in black hijab, were sitting in a circle on the grass, talking.   Black, green, the light from the river behind them.  A nice composition.

 

The women were obviously of a conservative persuasion, but I couldn’t see their faces, they were quite a distance away, so I thought I could snap a shot without being disrespectful.  So  I did.

 

Suddenly I was beset by the self-righteous admonishments of what turned out to be a  ten-year old boy.   His wagging finger advised me that I was not meant to take pictures of Muslim women.

 

I looked surprised, a bit confused and then I smiled,   “Oh, but I was taking a picture of the Nile,” I said in bad Arabic. “ The Nile, the Nile.”

 

He took a second to understood, then he smiled and he laughed, and I laughed and we high-fived, and all his friends all laughed in relief.

 

 “Yesterday,”  I wanted to call back over my shoulder.  “I took a picture of the Nile ‘yesterday.’”