Egypt: An Awakening People
by Imane Fawzy Nofal
In Egypt, we have a proverb which goes “sleep is a sultan”, meaning that sleep is as powerful and dominating as monarchs (monarchs are rulers e.g. Heads of States, Kings, Queens, who rule until their deaths and then pass power down to family members) . I agree, it really is, for who can actually resist the pull of slumber? And who can deny the rest and delight of sleeping?
When I was young, I was locked in an eternal conflict with this basic human habit. God, I just could not resist sleep. Personally, I had to fight it as I tried to break its hold on me. I can remember days in high school when I missed studying because I couldn’t wake up early in the morning to do so. Truthfully, I was never able to put in enough study time during early morning hours as I would have liked to. Sleep would not let me. I even had the thought then that maybe my mattress had a devilish spell that attracted me.
I tried the alarm clock thing, but my response to it was always the same; whenever I heard it ring, I would yawn, contemplated whether or not I should arise for half an hour, and ended up spending several more hours in bed.
I wasn’t going to give up that easily, though. I was determined to fight it. My main goal was to get rid of my servitude to sleep. I wanted to conquer and vanquish this submissive status. Alarm clocks were going to be the weapons I recruited. I bought about seven of them and I started plotting:
Stage 1: I set them to an early hour, with five minutes between each ring so that I would have to physically snooze each five minutes after the other. Didn’t do much good.
Stage 2: I asked my sister to hide the alarm clocks in different places, so that I would have to go looking for each and hence overpower the mighty sleep. Didn’t work.
Plan 3: This time I locked the clocks in the closet and put the key beside the basin so that when I went to get the key, I would have to wash my face to vanquish the effects of the devilish sleep spell.
Well all of these anti-sleeping plans failed, simply because I had no real will to wake up. I really enjoyed sleeping late and my fights were not genuine so they failed!
In my experience, I have to admit that sleep is the most devilish monarch I have ever seen. Speaking of monarchs links this discussion right away to the Arab world these days where the fires of revolution have been turned on. Egypt as my home land remains pivotal due to its important position in the region, especially being the country where the spotlight was turned to earlier this year, and since then, it has experienced political as well as social changes.
In oppressive regimes, people have few freedoms, and the air of expression is suffocated as well as suffocating. Take Egypt as an example, I think that even my grand ancestors never tasted the flavors of absolute freedom. As far as my historical knowledge goes, Egyptians have endured monarchy for decades; the rule of the Turkish monarchs and multi foreign occupation was ended by a coup d’état by the “free officers” – as they were called then. The military rule which took over was not much different either.
From the times of Gamal Abdul Nasser to Anwar Al Sadat till Hosni Mubarak, threats about prison, talks of media gags, torture, corruption and dictatorship never ended. Each of these military men ruled with an iron fist, controlling Egyptians and suppressing them into an obligatory sleep status; very similar to what I was experiencing.
Yet came a time starting on January 25th when emotions boiled over, and the rage, fury and frustration of the people led to a real revolution after decades of suppression. However, it is still very confusing. Like most in my country, my vocabulary wasn’t strong enough to fully understand such change and the ensuing ‘counter-revolution’ as several forces and factors fought to reverse the destiny of change as the dying regime tried to hold on. It is still somewhat confusing to listen to different views on how the country should move forward. One thing is sure – the war against corruption is still on, but with much confusion.
After being unified on toppling Hosni Mubarak, people were divided on issues like keeping or removing Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s prime minister who took over; he represented the last traits of Mubarak’s regime, yet, Shafik seemed like a good person with this one mark of shame. However, Shafik took the higher ground by resigning as a note of submission to the division amongst Egyptians. Essam Sharaf, the current Egyptian prime minister is now in control.
Egyptians continue to ask questions, each question has a dozen answers, and the discussions never end. Reform has a hundred different strategies, as put forward by ‘specialists’, each solid in their beliefs. The bottom line is, the current times are basically about spreading an awareness of political and democratic principles amongst the people as well as an assurance of a better tomorrow. It is like waking up after decades of slumbering to find that the people you knew no longer look familiar and the lenses through which things are seen have changed. Egypt is now experiencing a period of ‘waking up’, where conflict and chaos are dominating and the lack of skill to embrace their newly gained freedom is somewhat obvious and to be expected. Egypt is poised on a new path – slowly awakening, as we say bye bye to the destructive spell of tightly closed eyelashes.
Imane blogs at Express It 2 Live It
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