One of Egypt’s nicknames, along with ‘mother of the
world’, is al-mahroussa, « the protected », as if the Almighty keeps
a special eye on the country. Lately, though, Providence seems to have cast a
malevolent eye on Egypt, raining down plague after plague. Most recently there
was an actual plague of locusts sweeping in from Africa and decimating crops
before moving on to Egypt’s biblical neighbor, Israel. That same week, the
terrible accident of the hot air balloon going up in flames over Luxor made
sure to drive away the last diehard tourists who had braved endless revolution
and instability to visit the unique monuments of the country.
But acts of God or ineptness of Man are not the worst
plagues of Egypt: the worst wounds are self-inflicted. Egypt today has turned
into a Tower of Babel where no one understands the language of the other.
Islamist and secular, army and police, leftist and rightist, each group speaks
its own language and neither hears nor is heard by the other. In a country that
long prided itself on its cohesiveness and its sense of historical unity,
artificial schisms are breaking out along the fault lines of religion, sect,
ideology, and even, unbelievably, regionalism. That the Suez Canal cities of
Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez are in open revolt against the central authority
of Cairo is mind-boggling. Even more so is the cause of that civil
disobedience: the trial and sentencing of Port Said football fans who are accused
of causing the deaths of seventy plus fans of the rival, Cairo-based team Ahli
during the horrific ‘soccer massacre’ in Port Said in February of 2012.
Today, the court sentenced 21 Port Said fans to death,
and also sentenced the two top generals responsible for security and police to
fifteen-year jail sentences. Wherever the responsibility lies for the terrible
events of the soccer massacre, the truth is now the victim of political
football and tug of war between ‘Cairo’ and the Suez province.
Even the last bastions of national solidarity and
security, the army and the police, have now turned into power centers and special
interest groups who stage ‘million-man’ marches of their own to support their ‘cause.’
Yet this terrible state of affairs is not enough in
the eyes of many who wish to see the Muslim Brotherhood dislodged from the
positions of power they are grabbing hand over fist, often illegitimately in the
eyes of their opponents. Today, a broad coalition of opposition to the
Brotherhood sees no alternative to defeat their encroaching monopoly of power but
for there to be even greater turmoil, greater civil disobedience, more bloodshed
in the streets, and complete collapse of the economy. When will the plagues of Egypt end?
