Letter from Cairo: Thus dies Frankenstein… On lives the monster

In fact, political life in Egypt used to remind me of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” an American soap opera in which it would take a dozen episodes for one of the characters to explain to his girlfriend why he cheated on her and another dozen for her to explain to him why she left him at the altar, and might in the process dedicate a couple more episodes to another detailed account of the time he cheated on her since it was related in one way or another to her decision not to marry him. You were, in short, given the privilege of skipping thirty plus episodes and still not missing out on anything.Now, after three decades of yawning in front of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” we are panting as we follow “The Fast and the Furious.”

Having already had a hard time trying to follow the breakneck speed at which things have been developing since January 25, you can imagine what a torture it is not only when you are away for a couple of days, but also when all hell decides to break loose in those very same couple of days and you are left with the excruciating task of trying to figure out what was and is going on.

Suddenly, you are sitting at the edge of your couch, breathlessly trying to look for a rerun of the previous days while quickly flipping to today’s episode and worrying about how much you might miss in the few seconds between this and that.

While the pace at which things have happened since January 25 hardly left Egyptians a chance to catch their breath, and forcefully snatched the population from a state of utter stagnation to one of unprecedented action, the way events are unfolding now is an entirely different story.

Throughout the 18 days of protests, we were all waiting for the regime to fall and fearing what might happen if it didn’t, may be occasionally coming up with alternative scenarios that in most cases seemed bleak and unpromising.

Yet, as anxious and apprehensive as we were, we understood what we wanted. We had a clear vision, a well-charted path, and one common dream… now we are left wondering if we still retain any of those.

After February 11, when the revolution seemingly came to a glorious closure with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, a communal sigh of relief shook the entire country only to be cut short by the realization that while the regime might have fallen, the fruits of its relentless “divide and rule” tactics are now rising; and instead of trying to work on figuring out how to build a post-revolution Egypt, our one and only preoccupation has instead become understanding the pre-revolution Egypt.

There is not a more mind-boggling example than Saturday’s attack on a Coptic church in Cairo over some interfaith love story/marriage—the on-vogue trigger for most of the latest sectarian clashes in Egypt. Tension between Muslims and Christians is not new to Egypt and occasional majority-minority strained relations are quite common in different parts of the world, yet the case now is absolutely different as the specter of a nation-wide civil strife looms over the newly-”liberated” people.

I am not generally a member of the camp that easily adopts conspiracy theories and that is why I am not going to point fingers at “remnants” of the old regime as most Egyptians automatically do when similar conflicts break out and which I personally view as the easy way out of those crises that have befallen the country since the toppling of the regime.

In fact, I view the matter in much simpler terms: the former government had raised a few monsters and while the former departed, the latter stayed. Now, we are left to deal with them.

For decades, the regime has been playing a “dirty”—excuse my French— game with Islamists and ultraconservatives, a.k.a. Salafis, in order to maintain a web of extremely intricate power-relations between Muslims and Copts, and between the regime and its subjects. There is an Egyptian saying that best applies to the strategy the government followed with Islamists—giving something with your right hand and taking it back with the left one.

Islamist-leaning factions—moderate or extremist—had always been suppressed on the grounds of the threat they posed to the “civil state” the regime claimed Egypt is and in order, of course, to allay the fears—be they justified or not—of the United States and Israel as far as the Iranian model is concerned.

Yet while Islamists were hunted down, persecuted, and put to jail, they were in other ways encouraged, empowered, and assigned a major role in the country’s domestic policies.

Islamists were given free rein in poverty-stricken districts throughout Egypt, where they brainwashed the people into believing that Islam forbade rebelling against the ruler, and that whatever misery they were suffering was a test from God and that passing this test is what would grant them a place in heaven after death.

They were occasionally, and rather implicitly, given the green light to bully or publicly condemn Copts so that the latter would resort to the government for protection and, therefore, never strive toward a democracy that might bring to power the potential perpetrators of a Coptic holocaust.

The same Islamist card was used by the former regime with the West to guarantee remaining in power and to evade any pressure for political reform, which indeed worked at the beginning of the revolution when several Western heads of state stated, even if not in so many words, that Mr. Mubarak could be a dictator but was indispensible for his outstanding record of keeping religious movements at bay. Islamists were vital for the survival of the regime, which derived the biggest part of its internal and external support from fighting the monster it created.

Now that the regime is gone, the “monster” is able to break all the shackles and all geared up for making a full reality of what has until recently been to a great extent a legend. No longer under the mercy of a government that pats on its shoulder with one hand and slaps it on the face with the other, they are now more eager than ever to abandon their mortifying place as instruments and assume the new role of masterful players in the “It’s our turn” orchestra.

Let’s just hope we don’t end up listening to our requiem and let’s not leave the concert hall for a split second. This is a performance that allows no intermissions and missing one single note might very well herald our perdition. Let’s not go anywhere for only then can we be the tenors of our own fate and the vocalists of the new anthem for the new Egypt.