The New Egypt

Yesterday, a friend called from Cairo. I asked, "How ARE you?" and she said, "Great! Enjoying the new Egypt." No one is naive about the long road ahead, but from conversations I've had and things I've been reading and watching, I can see that there truly is a new feeling on the streets. There is a dialogue going around that I've never heard before: the building blocks of a civil society. People feel that they now have a choice in the future, and that is a powerful force for the work ahead.

There is a term in Egyptian Arabic that is loosely translated as "foreigner knot" (transliterated as “3o2det il khawagga”). It is the idea in (the old!) Egyptian society that "foreigners are better at everything." This idea was exacerbated by a regime that created a society in which, as one Egyptian commentator put it:

“To do anything, to act in daily life, one has to undergo a process of daily humiliation. In such a system, money (in a visible and material fashion) can guarantee some sort of bought respect, ultimately enforced by brute police power. What guarantees the purchasing power of that legal tender is the enforcer: police power. Therefore everything and everyone is for sale. This means that money does not only buy services, it actually buys people. Within such a system, corruption cannot be understood as a deviation from a social accord; corruption is the social accord, and the basic measure used for everything is one of repression . . . [so] you have a system that focuses its efforts on attacking all civil, social and state institutions, in an almost cancerous fashion, with the purpose of creating a condition of paranoia, distrust, and lack of self-respect. A consistent policy of promoting civil strife renders any sort of unity very difficult to achieve and, perhaps more importantly, creates a situation in which no Egyptian can respect any other Egyptian because we are all implicated within that same corrupt system.”

To give you the simplest practical example of this “foreigner knot”, for a long while, the Egyptian national soccer team had a foreign coach because it was thought that a foreigner would lead the team to victory, as opposed to an Egyptian coach. However, the team kept losing, and soon the Italian coach was fired, to be replaced (at first temporarily) by the Egyptian assistant coach. Soon, the team started winning, and the papers began to trumpet, "The foreigner knot is broken!" Beautifully, I think the revolution has broken this foreigner knot forever, and in so many more areas than soccer. A friend wrote me today and said, "the effects of this idea [foreigner knot] is beyond the social effects. I mean it's also involved with other issues (industry, investors' minds, engineers, etc). But thanks to the revolution, I think this should be over by now. And I can see the changes occurring everywhere around me, people here are definitely getting their faith in themselves back, as they now are able to realize it's THEIR country they should care about. It wasn't only a political victory, It's reaching every aspect of life. Can you believe that not even one case of harassment has been recorded since the beginning of demonstrations?! I'm happy to see and feel all the positivity around me. I also feel this change within me. I feel that I now have a bigger responsibility towards my society."

The Egypt of tomorrow will not be like the Egypt that existed before January 25: let the people rejoice! A friend, Tamer, made the video below: signs of hope for the new Egypt that the people are building, one day at a time. (Also, if you want to see more signs of this new Egypt, just read the news! There was a massive clean up at 10 am yesterday in Tahrir square - repainting, restoring, renewing. As one veteran BBC analyst - who has covered many uprisings in many countries - put it: "This is the first revolution I've covered where people cleaned up after themselves.").

Egypt Tomorrow - مصر بكرة (The background track is the Egyptian national anthem)