Celebrating with Egypt

In the state of Wisconsin, the home of my university in the United States, a newly elected “Tea Party” Republican governor, Scott Walker, forced through legislation that would end collective bargaining rights in the state, making it illegal for state unions to negotiate anything but base salary. As if he were taking cues from Hosni […]

In the state of Wisconsin, the home of my university in the United States, a newly elected “Tea Party” Republican governor, Scott Walker, forced through legislation that would end collective bargaining rights in the state, making it illegal for state unions to negotiate anything but base salary. As if he were taking cues from Hosni Mubarak, Governor Walker threatened to call out the National Guard if there were resistance. Teachers, graduate assistants, other state workers, and their supporters are currently braving the brutal Wisconsin winter to flood the capitol in protest of political manipulation of long-standing labour practices, but in the current poisonous political climate of the U.S., their struggle does not seem very hopeful.

 

Of course, in all their protests at reduced bargaining rights, at least Americans are so far getting paid their salaries. In Kano, I pass by Daula Hotel and see the forlorn banner hanging on the gate the third month in a row, protesting the non-payment of  salaries and benefits. One of the workers tells me that, since he has not been paid his salary for months, all five of his children have been forced to leave school. He cannot afford to pay their school fees. As for how they eat, he shrugged wryly and said that he had to depend on brothers and sisters.

And if workers in Kano are not getting paid, at least they do not have to fear constant violence in the streets, as those in Jos do. The city in which I grew up dissentegrates by the day. Deaths fade from newspaper headlines to page five behind the report of some politician’s speech, not because people aren’t being killed weekly but because it has become status quo.

With the euphoria over success of the demands of the people in Egypt, I’ve heard idealistic calls for similar revolution in Nigeria, and I’ve seen accompanying cautions that “it would never work in Nigeria.” And in a city like Jos, where people are killed for being in the wrong part of town, where I’ve heard people shrug away the death of innocents saying “they had it coming,” the liberation of Egypt seems a long way away.

But must we accept that there will never be a change? Last January 2010 in Southern Egypt, there was a drive by shooting at a Coptic church followed by further unrest between the Christian minority and the Muslim majority. A few months ago on New Year’s Eve, a car bomb exploded outside another Coptic Church in Alexandria. The increasingly sectarian violence between Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt reminded me, at least a little, of the violence between Muslims and Christians in Jos: the political developments behind increasing tensions, government claims of “foreign” involvement in the attacks.

In an IPS article following the Alexandria bombing, reporter Cam McGrath quotes a Cairo pharmacist Amgad Boutrous as lamenting changes in relations between Christians and Muslims, in which he could as well have been talking of Jos: “It wasn’t always like this […]When I was growing up, Muslims and Christians would go out together and attend each others’ festivities. But now everyone stays with their own kind, and religious symbols and slogans — which were not that important to us before — are seen everywhere.”

One would have thought that the crisis between Christians and Muslims in Egypt would continue to escalate in the same way that the crisis in Jos escalated after the bombs went off. Yet something went off course. Something went awry in the plans of those who plot chaos. When the bomb went off outside that church in Alexandria, Muslims flocked to support their Christian compatriots, flowing into churches as human shields on the Coptic Christmas Eve.

So, when Tunisia drove away their dictator, and Egypt followed suit, one could say that the solidarity of the Egyptian people had one of its beginnings in the gesture made by Muslims at the beginning of the year to help protect Christians as they worshipped. Christians returned the gesture during anti-government protests, forming a human chain around Muslims as they prayed. BBC reported, not long after Mubarak left power, that “The sign of the crescent embracing the cross was everywhere: From the careful calligraphy of the handmade placards, to slogans picked out in stones on the floor[…] I saw three elderly men, two Muslims clutching gilded copies of the Koran, arms flung around a third, hugging an ornate cross to his chest. […] A group of young men and women belted out a song of the 1919 revolution, accompanied by a guitar. “Arise O Egypt, arise. Arise Egyptians: Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

In an ideal that recalled old nationalist sentiments of unity and transcended resentments that divided them, Egyptians looked to the future, drawing on an ideal bigger than themselves. In the hours that followed the declaration that Hosni Mubarak had stepped down, I wrote on facebook: “Marvelling at getting to see in my lifetime a moment this beautiful. How powerful ordinary people can be when they come together and say they’ve had enough. Look at their faces and pray for the days ahead.” Later a friend commented: “I think I’ll wait about two years before deciding if this is a great moment.”

Intellectually, his remark works with my general observations on the complications and failures of human nature and political ideals. But, yet, my response was, “No, we celebrate now. In this moment, we celebrate with the people of Egypt. We celebrate now because we have so few of these moments. We celebrate because now is the time that we can, before it slips away into the complicated negotiations of an uncertain future, where the military may not do the will of the people, and the journey will be hard and the people of Egypt will need memories of the joy of this unity to spur them on. We celebrate the moment of triumph in Egypt, not because we think they will forever remain uncomplicated heroes but because it is these moments of human spirit, Christians protecting Muslims as they pray and Muslims embracing Christians in jubilation, which show us the beauty that glimmers in the universe. This is the mercy God allows us, the triumph of the love of humans for each other and the willingness to bend, to sacrifice, to suffer, to even die to give our community, our people a chance to breathe free. We celebrate the moments in which the people’s voices are heard, and in which they succeed, even if it is brief, because of course the abuses will come, and the evils will come, and the victory will lose it’s sweetness if we wait too long to savour it.”

We celebrate Egypt, not because their struggle is done, but because it is ongoing, because their victory this week echoes older victories against tyrants down through history. We celebrate because it reminds us how powerful a people united can be. We celebrate because Egyptians have demonstrated to the world how, in only a few weeks, the force of love and brotherhood can overcome the dividing forces of hate. And that is an achievement we must not be cynical about.