Well, it’s happening, Isis and Allah Willing…fingers crossed…
I sit on the edge of our red sofa watching live continuous coverage of the Egyptian Peoples’ Revolution on the Al Jezeera Channel, the best coverage to date (naturally). France24 is rather good at times as per the wider world picture and the BBC comes a distant whatever. My anger occasionally focusses on the sins of omission by Brits/UK and the USA–their plummy warm holiday destinations being under threat and their fears of Islamic Revolutions sending shivers down old and new imperial spines. I cannot but be wholeheartedly with these downtrodden and abused people, whose fearlessness in the face of tanks and tear gas stirs my own revolutionary leftist soul. I cheer them on despite the fearsome prospect of more Islamic control worldwide that Western pundits promote in us, thus evilly justifying supporting corrupt and repressive regimes. When I see women in the crowds my heart leaps, their bravery even greater, for what awaits them at the hands of security forces and prison is substantially more frightening.
If Only. If only their calls for freedom and the end of a repressive 30 year old regime can culminate in the fall of the Mubarek Monstrosity, replacing it with (as we are nervously hoping for in Tunisia as their so-called Jasmine Revolution continues with daily pressure on authorities who seem to be trying to follow some of the peoples’ guidance ) with an effective non religious handover of power. There’s no point in speculating right now on any number of possibilities, they are in the thick of making it happen. A righteous anger and a powerful youth culture, relatively well educated like the Tunisian youth, needs to be accompanied now by the rank and file of the oppressed majority. Many older Egyptians like Nawal El Saadawi will remember the battle to rid Egypt of the occupying Brits, and Egyptians know their history and they know what their country represents as the top and most populated Arabic nation. Hopefully the right elements will coalesce as they have in Tunisia (so far)–and Egypt is a very different country from Tunisia, although there are similar elements in the oppressive and corrupt nature of the regimes.
One interviewee (wish I’d noted his name) on France24 especially moved me with his description of how the corruption had entered the ‘very homes’ of Egyptians. I recognized this as the very same problem that I referred to earlier as the ubiquitous reign of the baksheesh god, backhanders for every little thing, the corrupt nature at the top reaching down to the very way people behave in personal interchanges: all for money. The bestselling novel The Jacoubian Building centrally focuses on this. No level of human interchange is uninfected with this nasty baksheesh bribery motif. It seems to me, watching young men support and nurture their fallen comrades today on the streets of Cairo, Giza, Suez and Alexandra, as their blood pours out for freedom, that the evil spell of the baksheesh god, Mammon by any other name, has been broken. They left their mosques on their holy day (today), streaming out in a leaderless, spontaneous explosion of righteous anger about living under an evil god and an evil and greedy regime.
I’d like to think that high up in some imaginary distant universe/reality, Isis and Allah got together and said: “enough is enough”, and The People heard them because they were listening in the silence of prayer. The question is, will their miscreant Pharaoh? “Illegitimate” they are crying out. Perhaps they are trying to dethrone the ancient Set, the evil brother of Osiris, embodied in his modern representative, Mubarek.
Enough is enough. The gods have spoken through The People.
Up since 4 am, listening to the news. Ah, it all depends on what the army does. I fear it is loyal to Mubarek, as in Jordan as well. But it feels like 1989… Hope is rising.