Dispatches from Cairo

A long forsaken blog. Blogging might be dead in some way. Writing is not. I have allowed the blog to die over the years as social media started to take hold of distribution. A facebook status or a twitter post were a replacement. Mostly because the point was about influencing people at a time of political fluidity. The dreams of contributing to a positive change died slowly as people in Egypt turned their back, not to blogs, or social media, but to the question of morality as a whole. What is the point of persuading people who do not want to act based on morality but opt for an notion of pragmatism that is rather impractical and only serves to camouflage their moral bankruptcy. 

As time has passed, the social media companies are controlling our content, siding with oppressive governments for an easy buck. It may not be the time to influence but to archive and document once again like the pre-revolution times. This year I will try and document some of the thoughts independent of transient social media. This platform now is far from perfect, but at the very least attempts to evade the continuous data games that are carelessly played by big social media companies who aim to control the spaces they once claimed were free. 

My time in Cairo is full of observations, social now, less political. As I walk through the streets my mind wanders to various things from seeing the potholes, the frail infrastructure and the economically defeated faces on the streets. 

Maybe I'll write once a month, or once every two months, but I will attempt to keep this going like once before and if I don't, I'm asking me to forgive me, because I know how overwhelming it has become to try and express myself in the face of trauma, depression and the frequent visits of hopelessness. I can only remind myself that even then it may have some value to express how I feel.

I'm hoping to be able to find more personal dispatches in the future worth noting. Or maybe this is just a brief awakening that won't last. Who knows.

Dig That Hole

Egyptians have worked very hard to be inconsequential, to take themselves out of the political equation, to hand power over to corrupt institutions and individuals in such a manner that disempowers them. They were provided a shovel to start digging a hole to shun themselves out of political life. That hole is more like a grave.

Never have I seen people dig their own political graves so quickly and passionately, pausing only to attack those trying to stop them. When they’re done digging the hole, the dirt to bury them starts flowing both from their peers and those who they’ve entrusted with politics. They help make sure as many people who object are in the hole next to them, cheering for our undertakers, and rejoicing in the dirt shoveled by their oppressors on their heads as if it were rain.

"Burry us some more," they shout, as if their distance from all the decisions about their lives was a blessing. “Shoot those who don’t want to join our hole,” they scream in a mob like mentality that condemns anyone who dares to look outside and point to the ills of what’s around.

They still see the corruption from the spaces that haven't covered their eyes so much, but they're happy where they are. They convince themselves that they can’t see and that those shoveling the dirt gleefully know what’s best. They convince others that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

The dirt fills the hole and they’re knee deep in it, they slow down, but don’t stop. There’s less cheering and they’re deep enough inside the hole for the oppressors to slow down. Those who want to move and stop the theft they see before their eyes cannot move from all the dirt that surrounds them. They feel paralyzed, that they're of no consequence, but it was they that did that to themselves.

Tell yourself

Tell yourself you’re better off not knowing. Tell yourself everything will be okay. Tell yourself there’s no need to make a fuss about things that go wrong with the world. Tell yourself that those in charge are responsible and know what they’re doing. Tell yourself that those who robbed your country now have your best interest at heart. Tell yourself that the police that violated all laws will bring about justice. Tell yourself that the judges who have politicized most of their verdicts will now be impartial. Tell yourself that the corrupt businessmen who have manipulated politics for so long will now serve their districts. 

Tell yourself that those who called for bread, freedom and justice were all financed from abroad. Tell yourself that it was their responsibility to fix everything that has gone wrong. Tell yourself that the country is better off without them. Tell yourself that they’re naïve and lack the wisdom that you see. Tell yourself that they belong in jail. Tell yourself that the calls they leak are deserved. Tell yourself they’re in prison because they broke the law.

Tell yourself that it’s not acceptable that people protest using bad language even if who they’re protesting against are thieves, killers and thugs. Tell yourself that you’re better because you support the government politely and they oppose the government with impolite curses. Tell yourself that bad language is worse than murder, shouting worse than torture, that anyone with a uniform is better than someone without.

Tell yourself that your morals are intact when you preach them in the mosques, in the churches and in your work place, but that they don’t apply to political life. Tell yourself that you haven’t violated your own moral code when you cheer on every violation of human rights, every torture, every arbitrary arrest and every murder. Tell yourself that these things happen everywhere and that things will get better by themselves. 

Tell yourself everything you need to put your conscience at ease, so that you can sleep better at night.

Enduring Gov

So Nafeza 3ala El 3alam had one of the lousiest last episodes in the Ramadan TV Series. Somehow the last episode was the usual Egyptian attempt to tie up most loose ends and to clarify the whole message of 29 previous episodes or something. In any case, the one question that it did pose, although it has been answered by the series itself is this:

Are there more honest people in this day and age than there are dishonest?

It's not much of a question, as the obvious answer is that there are more dishonest people in this world and they've become more powerful, but since when has the fight between good and evil very fair? Usually evil seems more powerful than good but in the polished up version of most stories we hear good somehow finds a way to overcome evil. Rashad Ghazal has a theory though, who said that being honest is right? After all it is trendy these days not to say there's wrong or right. The thing is we somehow know that this swindler isn't right, but the thing is that no one can actually prove it, because wrong and right can end up being very subjective these days.

So my real point isn't right and wrong, the point is that I believe that there are more dishonest people than there are honest people today in Egypt and considering this answer I realized something. I realized that the government we have today really does represent its people. The greater majority of Egyptians have become hustlers and swindlers by nature, they would take away what's not theirs and they would put their conscience at ease. They would trick their brothers, sisters, family, relatives and friends for an extra buck. They would lie, protect their interests, try to get ahead no matter what the cost and get away with what they can.

The government is a cross-section of this community, with a few honest faces and many dishonest people who hide and lie and do all there is to do. How can we complain about a government that actually represents its people? How can we argue that the government doesn't represent the majority? It's my opinion that over half of the Egyptian population are living in some sort of denial. It naturally ensues that the government should live in this sort of denial and pass it down to people too.

No wonder there's lots of distrust between people and government, and the reason is that there's lots of distrust amidst people themselves. If one can't trust his neighbor how can he trust the neighbor after he's elected to represent him. I suppose one can't even trust himself to do good for the others around him, so how can he trust another?

I know it's the duty of a government to look out for the best interest of its people, but what if the people don't want to look out for the best interest of one another? The truth is that there's no sense of ownership of this country. If you're not in the government you don't own it and if you are in the government you own it, but in an entirely different way. If you're in the government you own the country as a master owns a slave. A master that does not care for the well being of his slave but rather all he can gain out of that slave. There's no long term investment in the slave, the slave should serve till it drops dead. The slave should be kept oppressed enough so as to become powerful and satisfied enough as not to rebel. The people become the country and the country becomes the slave. This is the sort of ownership if you're in the government.

Walking down the street you can find that it's dirty and depressing, it's easy to throw away that snickers bar wrapper, it ceases to become your problem, it's someone else's. If we don't care about what we burden others with walking down a common street, how will a government care about what they burden us with? I've always drawn a line between government and people here in Egypt due to how the government was so detached from its people and in a certain sense I was right because of how remote the actions of the government are from the good of the people. But lately I've thought about it some more and realized that the government in Egypt may very well be the people. People are so detached from each other in a sense that they don't care for the good of one another in general. The sad truth may be that the government in Egypt is the people. There's just no way we can separate. There's no one we can stand against or fight, it's a civil war and we're fighting the wrong enemy. As long as people's attitudes don’t change, there will be no change in the government no matter how we fight it.

I think that's a form of democracy, but democracy on its own cannot guarantee goodness. Democracy is just a reflection of the will of the majority, stripped of goodness it can by just as tyrannical as dictatorship. If you have a group of terrorists democratically electing their leader what good does that do?

We may as well have been a complete democracy and nothing would have changed, we can't fight for democracy as the source of good. There was an interview on the BBC with a Saudi prince and the lady interviewer was asking him why don't you allow democracy in Saudi Arabia, and he replied, because if we allow democracy the people who are elected are the same ones you want to put behind bars, the same ones who want to obliterate America. Democracy isn't the sole answer to the problem despite its importance, the real fight is with the people from the people.

Would a person who would not fight for his freedom deserve freedom? I haven't thought this question through, but I know it goes past human rights, it's a question regarding the laws of nature. Do people who let others walk all over them deserve it? And most importantly do Egyptians deserve their government?

The Value of Latte

People are suffering, and I don't mean the upper middle class who suffer from expensive coffee shops or quadruple the price of electronic equipment when compared to the rest of the world. The average person is suffering greatly, and in effect we don’t really have an average person, we just have a huge base of poor people who are receiving inadequate education coupled with private lessons that only enable them to pass nearly obsolete tests which give them no chance of working anywhere competitively. The average person has disappeared and has been obliterated from existence. For every one thousand people getting poorer, one man gets a thousand times richer.

The real trouble is not just the suffering of these people, but their deterioration that will become our doom. The result of all the eighties movies where problems such as education, private lessons, jobs and housing were all discussed are starting to bear fruit now as we can see that the country has produced a fine bread of bitter opportunists along with helpless citizens and of course, the cream of the crop, terrorists.

I would imagine that those running the country have no love or compassion for anything or anyone around them, not even their children, for if they had some sort of compassion, they would not let the country fall to this dark and harrowing destiny. It is almost certain that their children or grand children will suffer from this chaos that they've helped create. Maybe they just intend that their children inherit their power and money, but history has shown us that the weak one now will later be strong and the strong one now can even rot in a military prison when his time has come.

Injustice breeds injustice and we've bread a lot of that. We're now harvesting some of the bitter fruit, but in time more will come. The fashion back in the day was organized revolution, but these days the fashion is some sort of vigilante revenge. I don't know where the future will take us, but what I do know is that now, the average man is suffering greatly. In one visit to a café from any of the upper middle class the amount spent is enough for one man to support himself and perhaps his family for a month. That 12 L.E cup of coffee that will soon cost 30 is a million light years away from the thoughts of those average people. Even milk purchased at the store has increased in price, and what we will have in the future is a fine generation with weak bones who are not even able to do the physical jobs that the government wants them to do.

The prices are killing people. They're struggling for the sake of the rich, and for what… for no reason. The rich are getting greedy and asking the poor to be more content with less. The country has become a consumer, it consumes all the imports and produces nothing but overpriced coffee places. The country is consuming all its resources but worse yet consuming all its people.

And here we are, sitting at cafés using the wireless internet and sipping on latte. I wish there was something more that we can do but there's a certain air of hopelessness because our worlds have been separated, we don't live in the same Egypt that Egyptians do. I'm not entirely sure how Egyptian we are because we're so distant from each other. I'm certainly very distant from that poor man who survives on what I pay in one day for going out, and I'm distant from those who seem to earn a hundred pounds for every ten they spend. We've been alienated from one another, we don't feel that we belong with one another and very soon we'll start to hate one another.

Compromise

Two kinds of people strip the word compromise of meaning; those who can't compromise at any time and those who compromise all the time.

When People Know You

The worst thing you’ll ever face in this life is when you let people know you well. It’s not ‎that it’s horrible for people to get to know you well, on the contrary it’s very rewarding, but ‎with all the merits comes the demerits. It’s not when they know you well that it’s horrible, ‎it’s when they step away from that knowledge. Somehow all the advantages of having ‎someone know you so well turn into disadvantages.‎

This life is deceiving, the moment is blinding and the people you’re happy with today give ‎you an illusion that this happiness can never be affected. But time has a way of turning ‎things around and changing everything. It changes circumstances, it changes people and it ‎even changes you. ‎

The people you know well have a way of knowing the good things about you and loving ‎them and ignoring the bad things. The only problem is that they get to know your lesser ‎qualities along with the better. This doesn’t seem to be a problem really because people who ‎get close to you get to focus on the good things and keep assuring you that your bad ‎qualities are irrelevant. They encourage you to open up and be yourself and show even more ‎of these bad qualities and get them off your chest. They still remain irrelevant, your friends ‎make you feel good about yourself and feel that your good qualities outweigh your bad ones. ‎The more you spend time with them, the more you even accept yourself, until one day…‎

Yes, one day comes when your bad qualities are noticed or pointed out. That is a sign of ‎distance, and more and more the distance grows and your bad qualities become magnified ‎and your good ones fade in the distance. The focus is on your bad qualities and all the events ‎from then on are to provoke the bad qualities you have. You’re completely off guard and ‎your good qualities disappear and even if they show they’re irrelevant. It becomes a ‎nightmare when someone knows you so well and focuses on your bad qualities. Like a ‎girlfriend who liked your body pointing out its flaws or a friend who liked your thinking ‎accusing your thoughts of being idiotic. It’s all a downward slope from then on, and it’s a ‎price to pay for having been admired or liked for some time. ‎

Everything comes at a cost, even intimacy and friendship. It has little to do with qualities ‎though, it has something to do with distance. Knowing someone well is a point of no return, ‎you can never have a bird’s eye view anymore, it’s all intimate perspectives with different ‎focuses. The only answer to it is change.. change of friends, change of self, or change of ‎others.. doesn’t matter, it’s a dead end. ‎

That too shall pass, but the worst part is before it passes.. the worst part is when you’re hurt ‎by those friends and you call out the usual ‘Et du Brutus’ … Being good or evil is irrelevant, ‎it’s a sort of inevitable treason. Being good shouldn’t invoke pity and being evil shouldn’t ‎invoke a feeling of justice. It’s just something that happens.‎

It’s not fair that I claim this to be the case for everyone, some people don’t go through this ‎at all, but I would say it’s my case. I’ve never cared for people’s opinions, everyone is a ‎clown in someone’s eyes and lion tamer in the eyes of another. I sometimes though make ‎the mistake of caring about what close people think of me. I know it shouldn’t be the case ‎once they’ve distances but it’s a reflex response to get hurt as you realize that this is ‎happening. ‎

Default Treatment (II)

Why is it that the default treatment of people towards one another here, and possibly elsewhere, is dirt?

Let me illustrate.

I’m waiting in front of my building in an old Fiat 128 that we own waiting for my father to bring my car round. My car is a relatively better Toyota. Since the street in front of my building is a no parking street, no car really has the right to wait around but as is usual a very small temporary wait in the streets of Cairo is nowhere close to abnormal. So my father pulls I behind me, car slightly slanted. I see an ‘Ameen Shorta’ (low ranking traffic policeman) waiving his hand in a friendly manner, smiling and telling my father itfadal ya basha and what have you.

I move forward slightly to make it easier for him to pull nearer to the curb. He motions to me that I shouldn’t move further and that it was fine, but the Ameen doesn’t see it. So what he does is that he smiles to my father then changes his expression to reflect a more intolerant look. As I’m getting out of the car, he starts yelling at me to move further in front (3agala 2odam) in a very aggressive and hostile manner. He obviously wants to do the pacha, my father, a favor by helping him align his car with the curb.

The bossy tone was meant to emphasize my insignificance, so I wickedly apologized for not moving my car, but point out that I’ll be out of his hair as soon as I get in my car just behind me. Baffled, of course, he adopts a more apologetic tone and showers me with all those pacha and baik remarks.

Inflexible People Annoy Me

Inflexible people annoy me. It’s not that they’re inflexible that annoys me really, it’s just that the only way to deal with inflexible people is to be inflexible yourself. That’s what really annoys me… that they force me to be something I dislike. Inflexible people want it their way or no way at all. I think that sometimes there can be changes to how things are done, but my stubborn nature in the face of inflexibility forces me to be inflexible even though I don’t believe in what I’m being rigid about. The problem is that inflexibility works and it’s the passive people who help make it work. It’s by others making compromises that inflexible people get their way. Perhaps it makes me inflexible when I stand up to people who are inflexible. Where’s the line between being adaptive and not being a pushover? I’m sure it exists in the minds of people, but one adaptive person is another’s pushover.

Passive people annoy me as well, but then again I’ve become irritable lately. I think my rigidity is causing me to be chronically inflexible, this is the disease that is passed on really. However there’s just no way to stop it. If you let inflexible people do what they want then their rigidity triumphed. If you stand up to them and hold on to your guns too obstinately then the disease has been passed on to you.

Back to passive people. They annoy me lots because they let people get away with whatever they can. They’re very short sighted and think that by letting things slide they’re doing the world some good. They feel that by being quiet they should be commended since they’ve saved a ten second scene or something of that nature. Passive people may have good intention, or may have cowardice, but one thing is for sure, they don’t have hindsight. How can they? And I’m not talking about difficult to reach hindsight, they just don’t understand the future or consequences of what they’re doing today, or maybe they just don’t care.

I’m annoyed by passive people because they give up their rights very often, but even though it’s their rights, it’s not their right to forfeit them. I’m not annoyed by them giving up a right, but I’m annoyed by the consequences of this sort of behavior. They make it a norm for people to give up their rights. They make those who abuse rights think that it’s okay to do so. They make people behave in such a way such that they’re sure that others will let it slide so as not to cause immediate trouble. I’m certainly most annoyed by the fact that my rights go down the drain a lot easier.

There’s a certain kind of wisdom called patience that can look like passiveness, but there’s one difference; patience is waiting for a moment to take a proper action while passiveness is letting the moments pass you by. Silence is better if it doesn’t help to speak, but sometimes it’s just plain laziness. It’s easy to give up your right, but if you look at it from a different perspective, it’s not only your right but also the right of those who will follow. How then can you just give it up? It would sense to give it up because you don’t care about all those who follow, that I can accept, but that contradicts giving it up in the first place because you would have to care about the people who violated them so as to give them up.

But like I said, I’m generally irritable these days. The world is full of very irritating things and irritating people but all that should not get to me. After all, life is not about what happens around you, but about how you feel about it. If I can stop these things from annoying me, then I can be the winner. If I can feel indifferent about passiveness and inflexibility, then I can win, but if I feel indifferent about them doesn’t that imply that I can become passive? I think it can make me not want to make a change since I don’t feel strongly about it. What then is the point of standing up for something if you’re dispassionate about it?
Is there a way to feel strongly about something and not let it get to me? I’m certain there must be.