Cassandra
Lots of my pen-friends wrote me after the Egyptian revolution asking me about my opinion, where is it heading and what is there to expect from it. Every piece of news, every current event or recent incident I received emails with question marks but I rarely responded to any of them. Others told me their theories, optimists and pessimist all alike asking me to comment, to agree or disagree with their guessings and my silent response again was the only reply they got back.
If you scroll down in this very page, you will read some of my posts about the 18 days protest that overthrew Mubarak earlier this year, I tried then to share some stories both mine and those of my friends in a single story, I meant to go on describing everything from the beginning to the end, but I obviously I couldn't as you see. I have gone mute of a sudden.
I couldn't go on celebrating a recently obtained freedom knowing that it brings the worst under its wings. I could no more hail to a peaceful revolution soon to turn into a long nightmare before a new dawn is seen in the end. I could no longer canonize martyrs knowing that canonization is but the beginning of dictatorships!
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret participating in the revolution; in fact if time turns back I'd do it all again no regrets. True, a revolution is the worst way to change a country, but that's why they never happen except when there has been no other alternative for a long period of time. Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddaffi simply would have never gone any other way.
I just regret the short-term outcome of the revolution especially on personal level. I became mute of fear and sadness that I no longer want to comment on politics, share opinions about it or even make it! For me, I know the outcome pretty sure now as much as I have known it even before the revolution: proof?? check this facebook comment I made the 12th of January, about 13 days before the revolution
" unfortunately, I don't see any other way... Egypt will pass through highly chaotic period once Mubarak is dead, the fragile state of stability we have here will only be maintained by an inheritance of dictatorship i.e. Gamal succeeding his dad... but even if that happened, even if the dictatorship last for thousands of years, it will have to end eventually and right then, there will be no stability... newly formed democracies are always unstable.
The republic will have to fight external forces for the Nile and for lots of other geopolitical interests especially in Africa and such wars need a strong stable internal unity behind a powerful, wise, fair and respectable leader; and unfortunately again, this man doesn't exist right now.
Minorities can take things up to limits, the last month only had many cases of assaults that push the Coptic limits to a far higher point, I am afraid most Copts already reached the boiling point.
The growing power and effect of Salafi Islam, will start targeting others soon, Baha'i, Tourists and even moderate Muslims... and while the army is so busy with external threats outside and passing the seat of presidency inside, we will face hell!!
I prayed so long that we don't get to that point, but now, I see it with my own eyes in the horizon: hell is inevitable January 12 at 1:41pm"
And now, after all what happened, after Mubarak left for good - not by death though but it all lead to the same result with a new unstable democracy, an army very busy trying to steal the revolution inside and look as a protector to the outside world, boiling minorities and incredible growth of Salafis' power, I think I know what will happen next!
True, I didn't foresee the exact cause of the result, but I saw the exact result. My prophecy of yesterday became today's reality, but it's not that that mutes my voice; I wish it was only the guilt that I didn't do anything to stop it. No, it's not that that troubles my sleep with terrible nightmares and scares the hell out of my heart. I am afraid it is another prophecy that does!
Like Cassandra, I see the inevitable destruction, burning and dark near future of Egypt. and although this comparison might seem unfair to a majority - in the sense that Cassandra saw her homeland completely destroyed, knew why and tried to stop the doom but failed to convince its people, while Egypt still stands, will stand in distant future and probably will be transformed into great powerful developed nation - yet in response I say, only if one is sure he is to survive the near future.
Last week I have been cut off by one of my university-days soul mates. Although we have been best friends, I have never told him about my sexuality fearing that I might loose him. He was the one to ask me about my sexuality, he insisted on asking and after I answered his questions, after I have finally lowered my guard to tell him the truth he so much longed to hear. He told me it's ok! even surprised me by saying that he knows lots of people who "do it!' and that he can't hate me then strangely cut me off one week later!!
In this example, I am not ranting or asking for condolences, personally I think it is better this way; he was never my friend, friendship is unconditional, he would have cut me off for any other reason e.g. if I changed my religion. I shall never weep for him.
But just consider this: a doctor, who graduates from a prestigious Egyptian med school, who was the most briliant all through his life after studying Psychology and Psychiatry cuts off his best friend in years for being homosexual although he was tought that it is NOT A DISEASE, he still prefers to listen to an illiterate imam and trust in religious fantasies rather than hard medical facts!
This is the atmosphere here! this is where I got my next prophecy and that's why I am speechless all the time.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a 100 YEAR OLD ORGANIZATION: 100 years of continuously and relentlessly telling people, " we will make Egypt a paradise if we ever rule because we will rule by the law of god. One hundred years of telling people that every little failure of them was but the punishment of god for not following its orders and for abandoning his sacred law. One hundred years of failure about to end, cause simply if one hundred years of patience didn't pay out, nothing will!
People have to believe them, people have to test their theories to be free of their influence. People have to give them their long anticipated position as a ruler of the republic before hating and fighting against their rule. Just as the same as they did with Mubarak and the military rule since the 1952 coup.
So, here it goes,
"The right wing Muslim Brotherhood will gain vast majority in the upcoming elections, Muslim brotherhood won't win the presidential elections but they will lead the parliament. The following president of Egypt will be the last one to rule from that position for a transition is to follow his reign and the next ruler will be the head of government. The muslim brotherhood will control the government and rule almost unopposed. Their politics won't be so different from their predecessor, the NDP. They will maintain free market economy and will even keep strong ties with the west, they will never stop corruption because they are already a corrupt organization and gradually they will own all that Mubarak's regime once owned. Their control over the public will be unopposed because they are gonna advertise themselves as the godsend saviors of Egypt. Everyone with ambition to be something in the republic will grow a beard and join them.
In the beginning of their reign the brotherhood will keep good ties with the major religious minority i.e. Copts while Athiests will be their main target of prosecution. They will refuse and condemn it, but in the darkness they will unleash their Salafi dogs to destroy Suffi Islam, secularist and liberal powers and they will engage in a severly bitter war against communists who will fight back for all that's worth it. They will then attack even moderate leftist parties then their war will eventually get to Copts.
They will not dare to attack Israel but they will just push the relationship with it to a new low level of political hostilities, they will make the wrong alliances in the region and won't achieve their so called agenda of liberating Palestine and unifying Islam's shattered lands.
Meanwhile, the majority will follow them, becoming more and more radical Islamist. Egypt will be an Iran internally, still it will sleep with America in one bed, but internally it will be an Iran with one difference: its population will be even more obedient and in harmony with the new radicalism.
The change in Egypt this time comes from the base not from the summit as in Iran. No one inforced political Islam here as Khomeny did in Iran, the majority wants it, the illiterate majority asks for it. the same majority that voted yes in the joke of a referundum made by the army only cause their masters hanged signs outside saying "yes = Eden & No = Hell!"
Everyone with a sane mind will go through hell until the sleeping majority wakes up! everyone with a clue how to run a country will be prosecuted until the majority rises in a second revolution to announce the Third Republic of Egypt... a secular state with constitutional democracy!
Here's is the prophecy, based on one simple flawless fact:
THE ONLY WAY TO DESTROY THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ONCE AND FOR ALL IS THROUGH IT'S OWN SCHEMES, TO BUT THEM TO TEST ONCE IN THEIR HISTORY FOR ALL WHAT IT'S WORTH. TO LET THEM RULE AND PAY THE DEAR PRICE OF IT, OTHERWISE THEIR GHOST WILL ALWAYS CHASE US!
So, I was there when the first change happened and I did nothing to stop it, I even participated in it. I see now the second change coming and I won't do anything to stop it.
Personally, I'd advice those who are like me to quit the country and watch from abroad the circus in display then come back to it when sanity returns.
as for me, I am no longer interested about the politics of Egypt, I know what will happen and I'll be damned if I stay for the tsunami to destroy my life. the only thing that interests me now is quitting Egypt and starting a life somewhere else. Too dangerous it is now to play the hero, too dangerous and too in vain to die for a change which will happen years after.
The only reason we canonize those poor souls of 25th of january was that they died in the course of the real change, otherwise, why don't we canonize the thousands of martyrs who died under torture in Mubarak's prisons! we don't even remember who they are.
Everything is subjective: causes, heros, martyrs, good side, bad side, good and evil doers! I haven't the least interest in being a real forgotten martyr not even the slightest interest of becoming a canonized one! I want to live and to enjoy my life... That's my only cause and let politics and politicians go to hell.
I am not gonna redo Cassandra's faults. There's no glory or pride in being proven most wise years after you've been impaled to death!