Go read this whole post to understand what the people of Egypt are feeling, what liberation, what freedom means to them. Then maybe you’ll understand their disappointment and anger at the cynical punking their “President” handed them yesterday.
The violence that had been inflicted on the protesters last week had been replaced by creativity; street art, long banned, was everywhere. Many I spoke to said it was the first time in their lives that they felt they had a voice, ideas, a part to play in the life of the country. Every person now seemed to count, and there was no difference, they said, between man or woman, Coptic or Muslim, rich or poor. “This is who we are,” one woman told me,
The government spent years feeding us lies, about tension between religions, about how we have no voices, about how women are lesser to men. They made us scared to express ourselves, and we lost touch with who we are. But look, here we are, all together, seen as citizens, equal. This is the truth of who Egyptians are.
Regardless of who ends up as their leader, Egyptians—at least the few million out protesting, and myself included—are fundamentally changed. On Facebook yesterday, the wife of the former Prime Minister wrote, “No one can deny how creative Egyptians are,” and posted a video of a dance at the square.
via ‘This Is Who Egyptians Are’ by Yasmine El Rashidi | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books.
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