back and not take oneself so seriously – anyone who lives purely for the here and now, as do Egyptians, has not learnt anything, will not learn anything and so can’t organise anything. Quite apart from the fact that regular tax contributions really are an exceptionally useful way of getting a supportive society off the mark. Plenty want it but nobody wants to cough up for it.
It is quite typical of the Egyptians to go in for something which is supposed to bring rapid improvement for the individual and yet to go about it with no clear perception of the realities, with no awareness, and a naïve national emotionalism that’s almost unbridled. I want what other people have got. I can do what other people can do. I want democracy. I want it tomorrow. And if it’s not here by the day after, then I don’t want it anymore. It was this same attitude and behaviour that flipped ex-President Morsi into power. Yes! Yalla! We want the Muslim Brotherhood, we want change, out with the old regime. But sharia law, any toughening of Islamic legal provision in public life, hey, we don’t want that.
That’s why it now suits the Egyptians, as their disappointing participation in the last elections has shown, to go all huffy and stick their heads in the desert sand. All because they didn’t get what they wanted and didn’t get it yesterday, whatever it was they’d been after. Quite apart from the fact that pretty much every candidate up for election came out only with slogans in line with the government. Now it’s back, that general sense of powerlessness, the paralysis of an unnamed civil cowardice which is, in many places, veiled in a religious lethargy of Islam, characterised by humility and obedience because man, directed by God – according to his strong faith – carries no guilt for his behaviour. If God doesn’t want all that, then I can’t do anything, anyway. Really anything.
Yet again the Egyptians are in the stranglehold of the rich and powerful. Yet again military top brass are in control. And yet again, they want no redistribution of anything. A small group of players keep the people in ignorance and poverty because if they were to change anything, then they themselves would become the oppressed. That’s how it is. That’s how Egyptian society has given President Sisi and his government such a reception. He makes sure there’s peace in his own ranks so that the withdrawal into private life, mostly into a patriarchy, can take place without disturbance.
Because I can’t change anything else anyhow. That’s how Egyptians like to be governed. But there’s also this emotion which so typifies the nation, and that’s the sense of wrath, the social impact of which has not been reckoned with.
At the end of October 2015, when the Russian Metrojet Airbus came down over Sinai, there were no survivors among the two hundred and twenty four mostly Russian passengers and crew. During the flight from Sharm al Sheikh to St Petersburg a bomb exploded on board. The savages belonging to so-called Islamic State admitted responsibility. As a direct consequence of the incident, numerous international airlines stopped all flights to the popular holiday spot.
For the victims and their relatives this tragedy had its own special significance but it had a yet further destructive element. Just as Egypt’s important tourist trade had started to recoup some of the heavy losses sustained over the years, with bookings buoyant and money being spent, now the holidaymakers stayed away in their droves after the plane crash. This new disaster and its consequences point up a key problem with Egypt. The place is desperately dependent on doing business with tourists. Cash subdues wrath.
Germans are not the only Europeans to prick up their ears when there are issues in this country. They are wondering whether they can still have a fancy holiday at prices that won’t push them back into overdraft. Instead of the Lakes and Mountains coach tour, surely it’ll be OK to go back to all the fun of the Nile once the Egyptians have calmed down again. But, according to European security sources, they haven’t. Light-heartedness doesn’t look like this. And those Arabs in North Africa, they’ve always been unpredictable, ever since that funny rebellion of theirs.
And besides. The centres of tourism between the pyramids and the Red Sea, between the Mediterranean coast and the Aswan Dam are quite safe. Well, as safe as anything can be. Even in deepest Bavaria, a falling roof-tile could land on your head. These Ali Baba types and their mates have got their eye on Majorca, too. The Egyptians do loads, really loads, to protect those areas. But entirely for their own purposes. That their tourist offering needs a thorough overhaul, that fresh ideas and independent thinking are not only useful but also bring valuable income, these are all things that Egyptians still have to learn.
It’s like this. Egypt and the Middle East have, like several other classic holiday destinations, become in recent years too complicated for any restful holiday in the ideal, sophisticated eastern style. If package holidays in a particular country are being warned against, then it means there’s something wrong with that destination and, for the average German, the average Egyptian is no longer worth running up credit for. This has fatal outcomes because now, more than ever, they desperately need every incoming flight to be full. Precisely because personal prosperity is balm to the soul of every Egyptian, the bikini-clad millions must come back, even if this means more money for the national and international business cliques.
Tourists of the world, unite! Come on over and visit! Come and form your own impression! It’ll be quite different from the one created by the frenzied, irresponsible headlines spewed out everywhere by the west’s gawping tabloids. Provided you don’t come here wanting to ask, live and in real time, one of the so-called Islamic State nutcases how his Mum is; and you don’t want to go on a desert run with arms smugglers and terrorists from Libya; and you don’t try to explain the Muslim Brotherhood that paradise doesn’t exist; provided you conduct yourself as you would expect an Egyptian to if he steps into your world and your local pub, then you’ll be as safe as you can ever be anywhere in this mad world.
Any foreigner living here as a guest wonders sooner or later who, and with what kind of lifestyle, actually manages to find any enrichment. When different cultures in private life nudge up against the boundaries of tolerance, then conflicts both big and small are only too likely to result. They are often argued out quite openly and honestly even if there is no solution. Some sort of way of living together is arrived at and shapes the everyday. Egyptians are masters at this.
Anyone who knows how to get round the shortcomings, anyone perceived to bring benefits for others, will inevitably come to the fore in dealing with foreigners, given a marked aptitude for insight and a herculean ability to compromise. In shocking contrast to the practical intelligence brought by the individual, there is indecision, yes, dishonesty, on the political stage. Diplomats and politicians on both sides are mutating into hypocrites.
Since the revolt, it has been said, and still is, that the west has to make a decision once and for all. In between two poles, there’s a real dog’s breakfast. At the one extreme, a suitable realpolitik with the Egyptian government. At the other, an implementation of the constantly propagated values of a basic democracy based on freedom. This is exactly what happened when President Sisi visited Germany in June 2015. While he was welcomed by Chancellor Merkel with military honours, the President of the Bundestag and second in the state at the time, Norbert Lammert, representative of a highly regulated, democratically elected parliament, had distanced himself from Sisi well in advance.
It was just to the taste of the Egyptian leader, himself a former General, to march in to brisk military music performed by people in the smartest of military uniforms. He always liked this kind of show. The fact that behind this polite posing he had been attacked for his harassment of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the opposition, and had been asked to think just a little, from time to time, about human rights, was met with his familiar broad smile. He knew. He was needed. Egypt is needed. After all, that was what the visit was all about. Because between east and west the land of the Nile is the last, reasonably stable Islamic country in a religion which is constantly characterised by the merciless terrorism of extremist lunatics and other radical Muslims of the trouble spots of Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
In reality the visit was no more than a bit of political theatre, embarrassing at times, performed for the public by Merkel and Sisi. It was a production of meaningless babble with which one of them faced the other for the first time and which the other had to endure. In all conflicts one stays engaged as a way of sending out a sign