Matthias Rathmer - Seeds of Wrath

Something often gets forgotten. Without ever wanting to, Egypt has become part of that gateway to hell created some years ago by the irresponsible and desperate foreign policy of the west in the Near and Middle East.

Sisi and the army are fighting a tough, relentless battle on several fronts against the murdering lunacy of so-called ‘Islamic State’, against the terrorist threats coming from Libya and against the radical Muslim Brothers. No voices are raised against this stance, nobody is there who remembers that this level of terrorism cannot be dealt with militarily. Quite the opposite. The President has prepared the population for the fact that this could be a long fight. The fact that his approach also includes the elimination of all oppositional forces for the maintenance and development of his own power in the country, does not really seem to bother anyone. Because the media, especially the elements he’s not so fond of, have long been switched off by the necessary laws, only very few people still know how much success there has been in the violent struggle is. And how little.

Any foreigner planning to stay in this country any longer than the duration of a normal holiday must at the very least understand the Egyptian people, what is happening in their country in these turbulent times, what makes them tick and what stirs them up. Given that the government and its opponents are fighting it out to the last breath, millions of Egyptians are living extraordinarily calmly with terror and with death. With good reason. And it’s a tradition, anyway.

So, as already said, they’re friendly people, outgoing and enquiring. They’re mostly hard-working, excitable and those who live in the city are loud and lively, apparently quite unable to bear a silence. They bother to make their own luck, given the affluence of the west before them, the poverty of their own continent behind. It would be good to get a handle on their pace of life, their wishes and their concerns. It’s like all over the world. Egyptians are fighting for their personal luck like anybody else.

But at the end of a day spent in the thick of their ways of doing and being, there’s still always something that can’t quite be grasped. That feel-good sense of wonder, that exquisite feeling of delight that travellers are hooked on gradually slips into a sense of disappointment. By the end of the week the longing for enchantment has been reined in. The mind struggles with its loss and the spirit with incomprehension as to whether you can have a decent life in a system not fit for purpose.

Next come feelings of confusion and bewilderment. Then, by the end of the month, the questions are crowding in about the point of trying to get along. That’s when the realisation kicks in; how big a show it all is and how limited the awareness. And then a whole year’s gone by and you’re still wondering how on earth people can live in this non-society with a perception which, at best, recognises the moment, and in a lethargy which stems from a whole society that is alienated because one or two of the lead guard want it that way.

But then again, it’s what the people of Egypt are, and the way they are, that can actually be so stimulating and exciting; their lightness of being and their uncomplicated satisfaction. And yet because millions try, quite logically, to flee the national dilemma by withdrawing into their private life with its healing qualities of peace and comfort, the whole country remains unreconciled with itself and a national catastrophe has been evolving during the course of which people carry on living as a matter of routine. Never mind whether it’s reasonable.

The rebellion of the Arab Spring, expected to bring so much to so many, has actually taken Egypt a step backwards. The Mubarak regime was to give way and, with it, all the social injustice, the nepotism and corruption. Then came a historic experiment with the Morsi government, the desire for a modern state marked out by democracy. A lamentable failure. Now there’s another ex-General in power, reacting to the insanity of violent acts of terrorism with equal military toughness and brutality. With the middle of 2016 violence has decreased. But! How long will it take?

Egyptians have been living with this dual between evils for more than two years. The country is smeared with traces of blood, branded with death and terror. Violence and counter-violence are routine. The Muslim Brotherhood and the government hate one another. Mutual demonisation. Once there’s a layer of contempt, forgive and forget no longer works. Whether in secret and silence or publicly and passionately. Millions are celebrating a President who shows no mercy. Millions are suffering under this dictatorship. And even more simply want some peace, and that’s in spite of all the crises, in spite of the desperately spiralling cost of even the simplest of lifestyles, something which makes every new day a colossal challenge.

And there’s more. The vast majority of Egyptians are peace-loving people. They’re always keen to help, are mostly friendly, often interested in everything and will always take the trouble. If one or two of them don’t quite manage the eagerness expected of them, and if the urban types of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Luxor and Assuan are on a shorter fuse than those in the country, and are more grasping and pushy, then given the millions competing with all the challenges, it’s hardly surprising.

If they can do it or not. Egyptians love order more than anything. They like to know that things are regulated. Going back to Ancient Egypt, the people feared nothing more than the loss of their cosmic force due to a weak Pharaoh and believed this would cause them to slide into chaos. History repeats itself and not only in another ‘revolution’ that consumes its children.

In between the Old Kingdom, the building of the Pyramids, the Middle Kingdom, the heyday of art and literature, the New Kingdom, the era of the master builders, and the later period when the Persians reigned supreme over Egypt, there always came a period of anarchy, of disorder and confusion during which the country would be divided or ruled over by outsiders. Scholars describe these as interim periods. And Egypt is living through one such period now. That’s to say. The problems of now are homemade and typical for human beings in our century.

The fundamental causes of the conflict in Egyptian society are absolutely not, as the west all too hastily and insensitively decrees, about Islam or ethnic disputes. The bitter battle is motivated entirely by worldly matters. With Sisi’s blessing and protection, a few elite groups in a different guise are today defending their economic and political positions of power. They’re quite unscrupulously lining their own pockets, helping themselves to huge portions of the country’s resource only then to squander it, and blocking any development towards a modern society. They obstruct the building of any useful infrastructure and grossly neglect all education and vocational training for the younger generation. It was no different under president Mubarak. And those who were eventually democratically elected would have treated the country in exactly the same way had they not been toppled by the military.

In the naïve expectations of the west, the Muslim Brotherhood were, on account of this perceived success, almost feted and viewed as the harbinger of a democratic development. They, of all people, were romantically idealised as bearers of the salvation of western values of freedom and democracy. What was forgotten was the reality of their special parts of history, the waves of violence and the bloody assassination attempts, their closeness to well-known terrorist organisations in the region and their readiness to break any law, without hesitation, to serve their own interests.