Disorderly Thoughts on a Disorderly Time

On the eve of the first stage of Egyptian parliamentary elections, I am reminded of the eve of the 2008 presidential elections. I remember the anticipation, the excitement, the world of hope we had built up, for some a first experience in political awareness, as a motley assortment of us crammed into a dorm room hovering over a peer's computer screen watching CNN's live coverage of the elections. I imagine the Egyptian Revolution of January 25th (sometimes called thawrat al-shabbab, the Youth's Revolution, not unlike our elections in 2008) felt like that, but this time, the Second Revolution, as some are calling it, has felt less hopeful and more immediately like peoples' lives are continually at stake.

What should I write about the Revolution? I have so many thoughts, so many fragments of a whole picture to construct of my experience of the Revolution. I have no answers or conjectures other than that I know that things will settle down, as they already are, and hopefully for the better. There is some glory in it, but mostly, it has been messy and regardless of one's views on the legitimacy of the Revolution, the government, the everything, it's been painful to witness at all levels and for everyone because of the simple and undeniable weight of losing human life. As with anything that is as complex as political events and the narratives that shape our understandings of them, I find it difficult to declare anything about the Revolution other than the trite old aphorism: it gets worse before it gets better. And hopefully we've seen the worst of it.

Here are some observations, anecdotes, and feelings I've had in the past week:

- It is jarring when life at the University, wherein people are up in arms about their grades and (in some cases) their professors' unwillingness to allow food in the classroom, is so sharply contrasted with events 50 km away, in which people are up in arms (this time, literally) about their government's lack of legitimacy and want to not be able to voice dissent without being sprayed in the face with teargas and blinded by rubber bullets. It's not that that kind of extreme perspective-taking* should always lead to a denial of peoples' feelings and subjective experiences about matters that are less dire. I don't think the whole country should put its lives and concern on hold indefinitely as it watches its country convulse with political uncertainty. But, it is dislocating.

- It has been really, palpably impossible to piece together any kind of cohesive truth (I mean more so than anybody's usual lack of objective truth) about what's going on in Tahrir without being here, but also, from what I hear, even being there, peoples' reportage of events does not mesh with what a variety of media sources say. Everybody I know here, myself included, has been consulting at least 5 different sources (Facebook, Twitter, Al-Jazeera, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egyptian state papers, Bikya Misr, etc.) to derive any ability to utter a statement they can safely consider to be factual. I've gathered that this is the usual state of affairs with the media in Egypt (and, if you'll remember from my earlier accounts, with basic geographical knowledge), but it really makes one feel crazy.

- As I stood in line with a few of my colleagues at the AUC campus clinic to donate blood for those wounded in the past week's violence, one of my colleagues suddenly crossed out all her contact info, thinking it might be unwise to give the Ministry of Health your whereabouts in case the government decides to crack down on anyone who might in anyway be supporting the protests.

- It's easy to get swept up into believing that because there are 100,000 people in Tahrir, and because it's all everyone talks about, that everyone believes in the goals of the Revolution, or even that the goals are as united as they may seem from outside of Egypt. While most people I know are in favor of some kind of broad sweeping governmental change, it's not reasonable to say that everyone supports what's happening now. Humanity's myriad viewpoints cannot be confined and boxed into solidarity with any one cause, even one as basic as what underlay the January Revolution, or even any one way of demonstrating solidarity. It is clear now that with the floodgates of free speech and free thought opening, that as in any attempt for democracy, the very ideals upon which a State is built differ from one person to the next and as such causes a wide range of divisions between people, from healthy debate, civil discussion, and nascent friendships to major rifts in families that deepen as the Revolution continues.

- It never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to stand up to voice their discontent by all and any means, when eleven months ago nobody discussed politics, religion, or the government in public. It's as though a spell was broken in January. I came here having a hard time believing that things were really as tyrannical as they seemed, and I am still not sure how exactly this daily oppression manifested itself really, but this seems to be the word on the street. Every street.

- I've been frustrated by what I've perceived as people being overly preoccupied by the knowledge that the tear gas and weaponry used against the protesters is American/foreign-made. While this is obviously true (it's written on every canister and is not surprising given the relationship between the American and Egyptian militaries) and should be considered and dealt with as people see fit, I think the more immediately pertinent problem is the fact that Egyptian security is using such weaponry, regardless of the source of their manufacture, against civilians. This anger protesters have at having been attacked using foreign goods is now being leveraged by the current government to insist that the Revolution is the result of "foreign hands" interfering in domestic affairs, which (regardless of which side one is on, if there are sides as such) seems to undermine the validity of the revolution as expressing the interests of the people at all.

- As I was reading Twitter posts about supplies and needs in Tahrir one afternoon, I was struck by how Scav-like the network of communication was-- everyone interconnected to a web of instantaneous information and supportive team members scurrying about the city procuring any number of things (biscuits, blankets, masks, gauze, jackets) to complete the task they've dedicated themselves to in feverish excitement, anticipation, and sleeplessness.

- It has been beautiful watching people honestly question themselves and engage in dialogue about their beliefs and actions and their roles in this movement, recognizing when they are called upon to act selflessly on behalf of the needs of others as well as the limitations and problems of group-feeling, even if it has felt empowering to them and has, they feel, given them a voice for the first time. It has been amazing watching people make this experience their own and authentic to what they each, as individuals, believe.

On a more amusing and lighter note, it may interest you to know that my father continually (and not in jest, mind you), refers to epicenter of the Revolution, Tahrir Square, as "Tahini Square." I call that wishful thinking. Appa, if you're reading this, I think you may be onto something...

* Extreme perspective-taking: a new sport?

UPDATE, Nov 28: While I've not been the polls (as I'm not voting, claro), everyone I've talked to today has regaled me with tales of how uplifted and happy they feel having voted and the smiles on peoples' faces and songs on peoples' lips at the polling stations, some run with remarkable efficiency and others where people are likely still standing in line.