Fahlawa Musings - تأملات الفهلاوى
Fahlawa (n.): "a combination of intuition, horse sense, experience, denial, and wit… intimately Egyptian...Fahlawa is the skill to survive in a modern world you are not prepared for, by using the pre-modern skills that you have learned naturally." (adapted from "What is Fahlawa?" http://goo.gl/Y1f2W)
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Egypt's Presidential Elections: Pick Your Poison
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Living in the Palm of a Ghost
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Election Season in Egypt
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Cab Ride
As I plopped into the front seat of my taxi, I was instantly taken aback by the racy music video that I found playing on top of the glove box in front of me.
“Ay da?!” (what’s that?!) I asked, with an expression of mock-amazement.
“A DVD player!” my cab driver replied. “Do you like it?”
“It’s nice” I responded, turning to look out the window just in time to see a mass of oncoming traffic cascading towards us. Unperturbed (this is a normal phenomenon on Cairo’s streets), I turned back to the driver, who was looking at me with a big grin on his face.
“Are you Catholic?” he asked.
This was a bit of an odd question, not because of its religious element but because of the fact that he asked me specifically if I was Catholic. In fact, asking foreigners about their religion is not an uncommon occurrence on Cairo’s streets and taxicabs, but usually when someone asks me the question they’ll phrase it as “are you Muslim?”
“No, I’m not Catholic.” I responded, “I’m Jewish.”
“You’re Jewish!?” he looked at me with an expression of disbelief, “I’m Jewish too!”
That moment was quite possibly one of the oddest I have had in Egypt. I looked at him, did a double-take, and the first thing that popped into my mind as a response was: “No, you’re not!”
I know for a fact that there are no Egyptian Jewish men still living in the country. About a dozen old women, all of whom are over 70, is what remains of a once flourishing Jewish community. I have attended a few Jewish functions during my time in Cairo (primarily for the food), and the only men in the room are expatriates, the boisterous Egyptian lawyer who does all the legal work for the Jewish community, and a smattering of security guards.
“Yes, I am Jewish!” my driver replied. “We’re from the same religion!”
“Ok,” I said, skeptically, “but you’re Christian, right?”
“Yes, of course!” he replied.
Just as I breathed a sigh of relief at clearing up that issue, he let forth with a second statement that was equally as odd as the first: “I migrated to the U.S. two months ago!”
“You what?”
“Yes, two months ago, I went to the embassy and gave them my documents, you know, all that, and they told me to check back in a few months to see if I could migrate.”
“Oh, I think what you mean to say is that you applied for the green card lottery.” I replied. I didn’t want to sink his hopes, so instead of telling him that he had about a 1 in 200 chance of winning, I simply said “May God be with you” (an Egyptian phrase meaning “good luck”).
“I really want to leave this country!” he declared to me a few moments later.
I had a sense that I knew where this conversation was going. I have had a few Christian cab drivers in the past few months who conveyed similar sentiments: simply put, a large percentage of Egyptian Christians wish that the revolution had never happened. They felt secure in the Mubarak era, happy with a sort of “live-and-let-live” agreement with the largely Muslim – but secular – Mubarak regime. Instead of focusing their efforts on gaining influence in government, Christians occupied themselves with developing a robust network of businesses throughout the country. As a result, they control a disproportionate share of the wealth in today’s Egypt.
“Egypt is going down the drain,” he continued, “all those crazy Islamists have taken power and they hate Christians. I don’t trust them at all! I would even move to Israel if I could!”
Huh. Maybe this cabbie’s assertion that he was Jewish had some unintended nugget of truth to it…I was too dumbfounded to respond with anything other than a bewildered laugh.
“So, who did you vote for in the parliamentary elections?” I asked, although I realized a second after I asked him that there was only one possible answer.
“The Egyptian bloc,” he replied, speaking of the bloc of liberal parties headed by Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris’ “Free Egyptians Party.” Indeed, if not for the Christian vote, the liberal parties (including the Egyptian bloc) would have almost zero representation in Parliament.
“And do you make any distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis?” I asked. “In my opinion,” I added, “the Muslim Brotherhood is much more pragmatic and moderate than the extremist Salafis.”
“No, all of them are terrible.”
As we climbed onto the bridge linking Giza to Zamalek, the island in the middle of the Nile on which we have classes, the conversation turned back to religion.
“So, tell me, do Jews worship Jesus and the Virgin Mary?” he asked
“No,” I replied, “Jesus and Mary don’t have anything to do with Jewish theology.”
“Really, so then who do you worship? Idols?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Just like his previous statement incorrectly claiming that he was Jewish followed by his expressing a desire to move to Israel, this one also held a nugget of twisted truth. The Jews did, in fact, once worship idols. In the story of the golden calf (which, coincidentally, was my torah portion for my Bar Mitzvah), the Jews – Egyptian Jews, moreover – began to worship a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while they waited for Moses to return from his communion with God at the summit. When Moses returned with the ten commandments in hand, he flung them down in anger at the sight of his people worshiping an idol.
Given the driver’s complete lack of knowledge about Judaism, however, I decided that it would be best not to point out this irony: “No,” I replied, “Jews worship God, the same one that Christians and Muslims do, but they’re still waiting for his prophet to return.”
“Ah, I understand,” he said with a knowing nod, although I suspect that he still thinks that Jews are some breakaway sect of Christianity.
That was the end of our deep conversation, although I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two more outlandish statements that he made in the last five minutes of the trip. First, after asking me if I had a lot of Egyptian girlfriends and hearing my response that no, unfortunately, I did not, he insisted that he would change that.
“I will bring you dozens of girls from Shubra [a working class neighborhood in Cairo that is home to a mix of Christians and Muslims]!”
“Thank you,” I replied, “may God keep you” (an Arabic expression that basically is a polite way of saying “thanks but no thanks”).
A few moments later he turned to me and said with complete earnesty:
“Michael, I want to go to Israel so badly that I would even become an Israeli spy here in Egypt if they would grant me citizenship!”
I can say with complete certainty that that statement is the single most shocking thing I have ever had someone tell me in Cairo. Talk of Zionist conspiracies and espionage, of course, is one of the favorite pastimes of the Egyptian media, and just as unfortunate is the extent to which many Egyptians – both Muslims and Christians – take what they hear in the media as the pure, unadulterated truth. To understand the absurdity of this comment, just imagine an American coming up to you and declaring that he had a deep-seated desire to move to Afghanistan and join the Taliban.
Weirder than weird. And also completely hilarious. Welcome in Egypt.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
A Timbuktu Madrassa
Despite its downtrodden appearance, however, Timbuktu still has a few gems that revealed themselves as I explored the town. The town was a center of trade and Islamic learning in the middle of the last millennium, and a few beautiful mosques and libraries of old manuscripts remain to tickle any traveler’s imagination. Trudging through the sand berms that passed for streets, I stumbled upon the Sankore mosque, a an mud-brick mosque with a pyramid-shaped minaret that dates back to the 14th century and used to house Timbuktu’s biggest madrassa (Islamic school).
Unfortunately most mosques in Mali have signs posted outside their gates that specify that entry for non-Muslims is interdite (forbidden), and Sankore was no exception. Rumor has it that foreigners used to have free access to mosques until Vanity Fair used the Great Mosque of Djenne as the scene for a risqué photo shoot that did not go over so well with Malians. While the profit motive ultimately triumphed over religious concerns in Djenne (my guide there informed me that I could have a look inside the mosque if I forked over $10 to a man sitting in a ambiguously official manner beside the mosque’s rear door), Timbuktu still seemed to be holding out. Sankore was closed and the prominently posted sign next to the front door discouraged me from knocking.
After I had circumambulated the mosque, I came upon a small group of low-slung mud buildings where, lo and behold, I heard a language that sounded a lot like Arabic. As I moved closer to investigate, I found myself peering into a classroom filled with students listening intently to a teacher lecturing them in Arabic as he gestured at pictures on a chalkboard. I paused for a few seconds outside the window to listen, but in that short period of time the attention of the entire class had shifted from the teacher to me (the large white man at the window). Not wanting to distract them, I decided to keep walking. After I had taken a few tentative steps, however, I stopped and thought to myself, “this is an opportunity that you should not pass up.”
“Salaamu aleikum,” I said to the teacher as I appeared at the door to the classroom, “can I sit for a few minutes in your class?”
“Please, here you go,” He responded with a mixture of surprise and bemusement as he pointed me to an empty desk in the front row, but he was able to pick up his train of thought immediately after I sat down.
The lesson of the day was about reptiles. The teacher had written out all of the material on the chalkboard, and he led the class through it in a sing-song voice.
“What types of reptiles are there?” he asked rhetorically in flowing, formal Arabic. “Some have legs, like the turtle and the lizard, and others, like snakes, just slither.”
To emphasize key points, he would take a statement that he had just made and turn it instantly into a question, expecting that the students would answer in unison.
Teacher: “Most lizards live in dry, desert-like climates. Where do they live?”
Students (in unison): “In dry, desert-like climates.”
Before attending this class, I had not realized that some Malian madrassas taught more than just how to read the Quran. In Djenne, for example, madrassa students begin their lessons at the crack of down and finish a few hours later so that they can head off to their conventional schools. They study Arabic primarily through the Quran, and as a result most students can read and understand Quranic Arabic but have no practical mastery of the language. This school in Timbuktu, however, was clearly different. As I learned from the teacher after the lesson ended, these seventh graders had been learning in Arabic since kindergarten, and they were expected to speak it in class as well.
Mali, like almost every other country in sub-Saharan Africa, must navigate some rocky terrain when it comes to language and education. The affairs of state are conducted in the colonial language, French, but two Malians speaking to each other on the street are much more likely to use a local language – “mother tongue.” Bambara, the most prominent of the mother tongues, is widely spoken in the southern part of the country, but it becomes less common as you head north. In Timbuktu, for example, you are just as likely to hear Tamashek (the language of the Tuareg nomads) or Songhai (the descendants of the great Songhai Empire that ruled Mali in the 15th and 16th centuries). This mixture of languages poses a serious pedagogical dilemma: should students learn in their mother tongue, the language that they speak with their family and on the street, or should teachers throughout the country use French as a unifying language? In fact, the Malian educational system seeks to find a middle ground: in government schools, students learn in the dominant mother tongue of their particular region for their first three years, after which all lessons are taught in French.
Unfortunately, this language dilemma has no perfect solution. The problem with the current arrangement is that children whose parents do not speak French find it very hard to connect what they learn in school with what they do at home. Ideally, a positive learning environment at home can reinforce the knowledge that a child picks up at school, but in rural Mali (and to a lesser extent in the cities), school and home are two different worlds.
The students at the Sankore madrassa also learned French, further strengthening their status as true polyglots. Their French skills enable them to navigate the world of Mali’s capital Bamako, and their Arabic enables them to communicate with their neighbors to the north (although they have to cross the desert in order to do so). But as residents of Timbuktu, their education still sells them short: if the leaders of tomorrow still conduct official business in Arabic or French, what hope is there for the vast number of people who will never make it past primary school? As long as this language dilemma persists, the prospects for comprehensive economic and social development remains slim.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Two More Muslim Countries, Two More Perspectives on Islam, Politics, and Society
Continuing my winter break sojourn, I left Israel just before Christmas and I’ve spent the past 2+ weeks in Tunisia and Mali. I am currently in Mopti, a transit hub on Mali's Niger River. Blocks of salt from Timbuktu, cargo pinasses (dugout canoes with outboard motors) loaded to the brim with food staples and other goods headed up the river, passenger buses headed to Bamako that are relics from a bygone era of transportation – it’s all here! Tomorrow morning, I am going to board a private pinasse and begin a leisurely three day journey up the river to Timbuktu. That world famous town is home to the Festival au Desert, a three day desert music spectacular that features both Malian and international artists. While the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime experience” has turned into something of a cliché, I think that it actually might apply in this instance.
The festival will be the culmination of my winter break travels, but I have also picked up a wealth of other experiences along the way. In particular, I have been fascinated by the different faces of Islam that I have seen in Tunisia and Mali. My reference point for Islam is, of course, Egypt. Thus, whenever I travel to another Muslim country, I find myself comparing it to the land of the pharaohs.
The Tunisian take on Islam is, from what I could tell, fairly similar to Egypt. Both countries are now about to usher in a new era of Islamist government, people who I interacted with asked me similar questions about my religious background and used similar arguments to try to convert me to Islam (they were just as ineffective in Tunisia as they have been in Egypt), and Tunisian Arabic, like Egyptian, is peppered with religious phrases. One major difference, however, is that the Salafi (hardline Islamist) movement that has taken Egypt by storm over the past decade has yet to manifest itself in Tunisia. I saw a few Tunisian men sporting the long beard that has become a Salafi trademark, but the phenomenon was nowhere near as widespread as it is in Egypt. Al-Nahda, the formerly banned Islamist movement that won a majority in the recent parliamentary elections, seems to be decidedly centrist, and people were quite happy about the appointment of a well-known secular politician as the country’s president (the prime minister is an Islamist). Just as many people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told me that they did so primarily because they respected the brothers and wanted to see how they would handle being in power (and not out of a fierce devotion to the party or a desire to see Egypt go the way of Iran), a number of Tunisians told me that they had voted for Al-Nahda for the same reasons. “Give them a chance,” one taxi driver told me, “and if we don’t like them we’ll find someone new next time around.”
Mali, on the other hand, is a world away from Egypt. The most notable difference is linguistic. The country is 90% Muslim and mosques abound, but the vast majority of Malians only know a few token Arabic religious phrases (perhaps a close analogy is that of American Jews who pray in Hebrew but have no practical understanding of the language). I enjoy using those phrases (Peace be upon you, God willing, praise God, etc.) when I speak with Malians, but the only full conversation in Arabic that I’ve had here was with the imam of the Great Mosque of Djenne (pictured below).
I was able to gain some insight into Islam’s place in Malian society when I ate dinner with a volunteer from the Peace Corps who is living and working in southern part of the country. The mosque in her village, she said, is largely the domain of the old men who study and pray there. The youth, she observed, tend to be fairly uninterested in religion. Nevertheless, the whole village does observe Ramadan (even the Christians join the prayers during Eid Al-Fitr at the end of the holy month) and Eid Al-Adha (the day of sacrifice), engaging in practices like fasting and slaughtering a goat that would be instantly recognizable to Muslims around the world.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the beautiful Islamic architecture that I have seen in both Tunisia and Mali. I have included some pictures of the exquisite doors on houses in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia and a white mosque wedged onto a hill in a Berber village in southern part of the country. Mali, on the other hand, is all about mud. The Great Mosque of Djenne surpassed my sky-high expectations that I held coming into this trip – it is, simply put, a stunning building.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Qalandia Checkpoint
The ride from Jerusalem to Ramallah is short. In less than hour, after zipping through the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Israel from the West Bank, Trevor and I found ourselves in the heart of Palestine. After spending two and a half days in Nablus and Ramallah (with quick trips to Bethlehem and Taybeh, a small village southeast of Ramallah that is home to the Arab world’s only microbrewery), we decided it was time to go back to Israel.
The ride from Ramallah to Jerusalem is long. After about 25 minutes, we arrived once again at Qalandia, where everyone on the bus jumped from their seats and clamored to get off as fast as possible as if their lives depended on it. Bemused, Trevor and I took our time exiting and had to retrieve our bags from underneath the bus. We had heard about the difficulties that Palestines faced in trying to pass through Qalandia, but we assumed that there would be some other way for foreigners like us to bypass that messy process and waltz back into Israel. There was not.
We assumed our place in line behind the rest of our bus in a space that can only be described as an animal pen built for humans. Metal bars on both sides of the corridor hemmed us in, and a revolving metal door at the end regulated the flow of traffic into the security area. No official was in sight, nor were there any guardrails that might have enabled us to line up in an orderly fashion. In the absence of supervision, jostling and pushing soon resulted in the formation of a giant blob of humanity pressed up against the walls and the gate.
Five people were allowed into the security area at a time. When they passed through, a buzzer above the gate emitted a prison-esque beep and the red light turned green. The revolving doors unlocked abruptly, and the blob pushed forward in an effort to squeeze through. This cattle carousel came to an abrupt end after five more people made it through, and there was often one unlucky person who found himself literally stuck in between the revolving metal doors and the bars on either side. Each prisoner stood with a forlorn, distant look in his face for a few minutes until the buzzer sounded again to let five more through.
We inched forward ever so slowly, and the congestion worsened significantly as we approached the gate. An older woman behind me clucked disapprovingly to her companion: “mithla hayawanat ihna!” (It's like we're animals!). In front, I watched through the bars as an old man was refused entry because his papers were not in order. He gestured angrily at the border guards (who were invisible from our vantage point), but finally threw up his hands in resignation and began to look for a way to return to the Palestinian side. There was no side door. Everyone waiting in and next to the metal gate had to move back to let him pass back the way he came, head down and cursing to himself.
After some time – I don’t remember how long exactly – we finally made it through the gate. As we were walking the several feet from the gate to the x-ray machine, an old woman walking between us didn’t see a piece of concrete sticking up on the ground, tripped over it, and fell onto her knees. The contents of her bag spilled onto the ground, and she looked up at me with a desperate, exhausted look that I will not soon forget. She picked herself up – no time to nurse your wounds in the no man’s land between the gate and security area – and shuffled forward.
We put our bags through an x-ray machine, walked through an unmonitored metal detector, and handed our passports to two Israeli soldiers sitting behind soundproof glass. I handed them my passport with stone-faced stare, mirroring the one I was receiving from the soldier. After flipping through it with a few cursory glances, he handed it back and waved me away dismissively. As I walked toward the bus that would take us from the checkpoint to Jerusalem, I was serenaded with one last buzzer sound and creak of the metal gate as five more humans – mithla hayawanat – pressed through.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
New Look, Same Blog
The new name is a nod to the uniquely Egyptian word "fahlawa." While it defies a precise translation into English, fahlawa is basically a way to describe how the majority of Egyptians survive on a day-to-day basis. With high rates of unemployment and a lack of social stability, most Egyptians earn their daily bread in the informal sector. A person who embodies the idea of fahlawa is one who can swiftly assess any new situation that he finds himself in and figure out if there is a way to profit from it. As a foreigner in Egypt, I have "fahlawa experiences" on regular basis, and they tend to be alternatively hilarious, frustrating, and enlightening. For a good example of fahlawa, check out this post that I wrote during my semester abroad in Alexandria in 2010. Finally, for a full, eloquent definition of the word, I strongly encourage everyone to visit the "al-Bostoni" blog - he hits the nail right on the head.
So, without further ado, I invite you to join me at www.fahlawamusings.com!
An Analysis of Last Week's Events in Tahrir Square
Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square en masse last week in what many dubbed the “second revolution”. What began as a largely Islamist protest on November 18 against the attempts of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to insulate itself from civilian oversight and play an active role in politics turned into an extended sit-in as thousands of protesters, with the support of all of Egypt’s liberal parties, clashed with central security forces and sought to bring down the SCAF. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, which had a heavy presence in the square on November 18, was noticeably absent from the subsequent protests.
The dynamics of the most recent Tahrir Square protests shed further light on the distinct strategies that Egypt’s liberal and Islamist groups employ to achieve similar goals. Both groups descended upon Tahrir Square to voice their opposition to the SCAF’s ongoing rule. The Islamists, however, made it clear that they view the ballot box as the most effective means to combat the SCAF. After their brief stint in the square, they refused to officially support the ongoing protests and strenuously resisted calls to delay this week’s parliamentary elections (which, by most accounts, they are poised to dominate). Liberals, on the other hand, demonstrated once again that the square is their preferred forum to express discontent and try to effect change. Although elections were less than a week away, nearly every liberal party turned its attention away from their campaigns and supported efforts to topple the SCAF. While both sides are participating in the elections, the liberals have had little success in expanding their base of supporters and thus have little to lose by continuing to protest. The Islamists, on the other hand, seem ready to take aim at the SCAF through the institutions of state – namely the Parliament. The diverging tactics employed by both sides reveal fundamental differences in the groups’ faith in the democratic system as a framework within which to achieve their goals.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, Egypt’s two most prominent Islamist groups, began the Tahrir saga on November 18 with a major protest against a SCAF’s proposed supra-constitutional principles. The most contentious aspects of the document included a stipulation that the military budget would not be subject to civilian oversight and an effort to ensure an active role for the military in the constitutional process. Both Islamists and liberals opposed these principles on the grounds that they would enable the military to remain outside the control of any civilian government. The Islamists were particularly vehement in their opposition, however, because they feared that the principles would also empower the military to intervene in politics – a direct threat to the Islamists’ strategy of gaining control of political institutions and working through them to oppose the military. The Islamists crowded the square with thousands of supporters and spent the day inveighing specifically against the supra-constitutional principles.
While the Islamist supporters left the square, a few family members of those killed and injured during the January revolution who had spent the day in Tahrir decided to remain. On Saturday, a group of central security police officers violently flushed them out. As news spread of the officers’ use of excessive force, thousands of Egyptians came down to the square to support the protesters. By the end of the night, protesters had retaken the square and running battles with the police continued on the outskirts of Tahrir. Compelled by the spread of videos showing the police treating the dead with utter disrespect, the crowd in Tahrir continued to grow. By Sunday night, one of the streets leading to the square turned into a de facto war zone between riot police and protesters.
With thousands of protesters in the square, the array of Egyptian political parties faced a choice: support the protesters and demand the resignation of the SCAF or call for calm and a truce to end the fighting. The response from the liberal side was overwhelming: activists who had played a major role in the January revolution set up camp in the square, twitter buzzed with activity, and the chants calling for the SCAF to step down grew louder by the minute. Furthermore, liberal parties released official statements of support for the “million-man protest” on Tuesday, November 22. The Free Egyptians Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, distributed a list of seven demands that included the widely-echoed call for the formation of a “National Salvation Government” to take control of the country. Such a government, which protest leaders had proposed would include a representative distribution of Egypt’s political interests led by the respected presidential candidates Mohamed al-Baradei (a liberal) and Abu Monem Abul-Fatooh (a former Muslim Brotherhood member), represented the ideal solution for Egypt’s liberals: the end of SCAF rule and a transfer of power to a government headed by a trusted liberal leader with popular support.
As the violence continued and the ministers of the sitting government submitted their resignations in protests, the SCAF’s hold on power seemed to weaken. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, remained on the sidelines. The group equivocated, stating that it would not officially participate in the protests but supported the right to peaceful protests and sit-ins. When some of the group’s younger members joined the protests in defiance of orders from their superiors, the brotherhood released a statement on its website reaffirming its original decision not to participate.
For their part, the liberal parties were not prepared to match some of the most extreme demands of the activists in Tahrir. As pressure from many activists for a delay or boycott of the elections grew in light of the violence, most liberal parties did not officially support such calls. Indeed, the speed with which those in the square forsook the elections in favor of concentrated opposition to the SCAF indicates the particularly low value that many hardcore revolutionaries place in the electoral process as a means to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, the liberal parties stood in solidarity with the protesters against the SCAF throughout the week.
For the time being, the SCAF has regained its hold on power. After soldiers stepped in to end violence, the protesters found themselves unable to maintain the support that they had received out of sympathy for those who had died or been injured while fighting the police. Now, as the liberals’ immediate and direct challenge to the SCAF’s rule seems to have temporarily softened, the advent of parliamentary elections means that the Islamists’ real efforts are just beginning. In the end, however, both sides will likely realize that they are most likely to achieve their common goal of knocking the SCAF out of power through coordination and cooperation. A combination of intense protests and parliamentary pressure – drawing on the resources of both the liberals and Islamists – may well be the straw that breaks the SCAF’s back.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Why?
Protesters want the military council out; that much is clear. The post-revolution elation and optimism about the military's potential to responsibly guide the country through the current transitional period is gone. It gradually dissipated throughout a spring, summer, and fall that saw a flurry of military trials for civilians, a ratcheting up of media censorship, and generally incompetent leadership on all fronts.
What is still unclear, however, is why the protesters and police continue to fight. The fighting has been concentrated for several days now on Mostafa Mahmoud Street - one of the streets that leads to Tahrir Square - and the battle lines have scarcely moved.
One possibility is that the protesters are trying to break through the police barricades and reach the Ministry of the Interior (MoI). The MoI was and still is one of the hated state institutions, and one of the central demands of the January revolution was that it be completely reformed. That reform hasn't yet happened. But do the protesters really think that they can break through a police line, huge barbed-wire fences, and then several more phalanxes of police and soldiers protecting the building? Even if protesters were able to break through, the death toll would be horrific, and they would be no closer to actually achieving their goal of reforming the ministry.
Another possibility is that the police are trying to fight through the line of protesters in an effort to reach Tahrir Square and drive out its occupants. But why would the police concentrate all of their resources on just one street? Clearly, if they wanted to remove protesters from the square by force they would launch a multi-pronged assault (that happened on Saturday, by the way, but the police then withdrew from the square and protesters reoccupied it).
Despite the absolute lack of logic, the fight continues. Ambulances make runs to and from the front lines, field hospitals in the square are jammed with people suffering from head wounds and excessive tear gas inhalation. Everyone screams slogans against the military council and the police, but no one stops to think about whether thousands of Egyptians continuing to throw rocks at hundreds of police officers is actually achieving anything.
The situation defies logic, but that might be the point. We may have arrived at the point where Egyptians are fighting just for the sake of fighting. To the protesters on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, the police are the representatives of a dictatorial system that still hasn't died. They are expressing their frustration and anger with every rock that they throw. That may be why.
But what does the future hold for this country? No one knows.