What is happening in Egypt is shocking but not surprising. All too often we tend to look at Egypt as the land of the Pharaohs, epitomised by pyramids, temples, sphinxes and obelisks that look as if they were created magically by extraterrestrials but is now chock-full of pesky interlopers called modern Egyptians that bear no resemblance to Ramses or Tuthmoses and who, because of their political volatility, tend to spoil our plans for edifying Nile cruises and exciting Red Sea diving holidays at Sharm al Sheik!
The so-called Arab Spring has skipped a season into a tortured and labyrinthine Arab Autumn
The ousting of President Mohamed Morsi who was democratically elected, by military intervention will have repercussions that are as dire and far reaching as those great tussles for power we are still uncovering in Ancient Egypt.
Contemporary events seem to mirror the humongous battle between the priests of Aten and Amun when Egypt was torn by religious strife even in the time of the pharaonic cult all these centuries ago. In fact, Egypt has always been and still is rent asunder by controversies fired by fervent belief.
With just a glance at its more recent history, one reads of the streets of Alexandria running blood during the riots between the Monophysites and the believers in the Dual Nature. Egypt’s role in the Crusades was always pivotal with Fatimids and Mamelukes switching sides, mostly fuelled by venal exigencies and with the rulers unscrupulously exploiting the harsh divides between Sunni and Shiite to achieve their ends. That has not changed at all.
Reading Amin Maalouf’s wonderful The Crusades As Seen Through Arab Eyes is fascinating but clearly shows Egypt up as a land in which, very often, violence and revolution was the rule and not the exception.
But it is without a shadow of a doubt Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairene Trilogy that paints a largely autobiographical and indelibly impressive scenario of what Egypt was like at the beginning of the last century.
The martyrdom of the most likeable and dreamy Fahmy, not far from Tahrir Square, was, in the light of recent events, rendered even more poignant.
How many young lives throughout our blood-drenched history have been savagely truncated in the name of politics and religion?
Yes, despite its huge potential as the ultimate touristic honeypot, Egypt remains as politically and religiously torn apart as it always was. The so-called Arab Spring has skipped a season into a tortured and labyrinthine Arab Autumn out of which there seems to be no escape.
I visited Egypt with friends some seven years ago and, despite developing a terrible chest infection, enjoyed it tremendously. One eventually gets used to an all pervading military presence everywhere.
I will never forget peeping out of the coach window towards dawn when hurtling towards Abu Simbel and waving to these young soldiers flashing dazzlingly toothy smiles packed on the military jeeps and trucks that accompanied a convoy of tourists like us towards one of the most awe-inspiring buildings in the world. Holding on for dear life as the vehicles careened over the desert’s undulations and clutching their Kalashnikovs, these boys still looked at the deadly business of protecting us as a great adventure.
Despite this, even then I was very much aware of a seething resentment; an undercurrent of palpable unrest in the population. Not so much as in the historical sites like Karnak or Luxor but certainly in the fascinating Cairene markets and the legendary El Fishawi teahouse.
It was, for me, a third time lucky. In fact, as it seemed that destiny was dead set against my visiting Egypt altogether. I had been booked to go on a tour a few years before and the week before we left there was that awful massacre at the temple of Hatshepsut and the tour was cancelled. Before that, again at the last minute, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated and the tour was cancelled again.
I was rather worried that by booking a third time I would be tempting Providence and precipitate some new disaster.
But I was lucky as my infection was miraculously cured by this wonderful Coptic doctor in less than 24 hours, allowing me to visit Karnak, albeit in a wheelchair, hours after hallucinating because of the high temperature. Just under a week after we had left, two huge bombs exploded in front to the Cairo Museum in Tahrir Square.
I am writing on Friday, the Islamic Day of Prayer, where in all Muslim countries the time after prayers seems to precipitate tumultuous events. Anything can happen.
Personally, I do not see a military dictatorship as an option to democracy but, then, is Egypt ready for it? Are we? I sometimes wonder. Perhaps it is what democracy has transmogrified itself into which does not work anymore.
In this day and age, governments have to be all things to all men in order to attain and, more importantly, retain power. There is no ideologically dominant class anymore.
It is now all about the ever-expanding andante spianato middle class, which encompasses a huge variety of people of diverse economic means and with vastly different political, ideological and economic expectations. This is happening all over the world, Malta too!
Today’s governments are consequently pushed into the impossible position of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. It is no wonder that the West becomes ever weaker while, ironically, half Muslim world from Syria to Morocco is in a state of flux and is dreaming about and fighting for a democratic ideal that, ironically, is rapidly going belly up in the very countries in which it was nurtured.
With the IT revolution it seems that no government is safe and secure. Just look at the fuss made about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. More than ever before it is a question of uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.