Covering the Sphinx in Wax or talking about Shaw and Mahfouz
“You are Irish, I like George Bernard Shaw”
“Shaw. Wow…I don’t know much about him”
The disappointment on the face of the Egyptian man sitting beside me would have made the Sphinx cry.
It was just the truth. Shaw is one of the Irish writers I know least about. I saw ‘Saint Joan’ in the Abbey Theatre (I think) many years ago, and I don’t remember being very impressed. Maybe the ideologically red hot furnace in which my literary interests were forged in college- made me suspicious of a writer described as a Fabian.
Yep- to sort off quote Woody Allen- I was once a literary bigot, but a bigot for the far left. I like to think I’m better now though.
So I switched the conversation.
“I like Naguib Mahfouz.”
“Ah yes, Mahfouz a great hero here. In touch with the people, the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. You have read some of his books? “
He smiled when I told him that reading Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, in this city, over the past two months- has been one of the great literary experiences of my life.
The man was in his late 50s I think. And he had landed in the seat beside me, shuffling his newspaper loudly and obviously angling for a conversation.
The backdrop was somewhat depressing.
Just across the road the remaining tents of the revolutionary vanguard, hung languidly. There is a sense of despondency in Tahrir Square at the moment- a despondency that would drain anyone who has shared in the tumultuous history of this city over the past month. Numbers are down in the square, the elections trundle on, the revolutionaries wait until the anniversary of the revolution next month.
“I am optimistic, things will get better”.
Surprisingly the Egyptian man was upbeat despite the scene outside the coffee shop. Speaking in deliberate, but excellent English, he said he had been a lawyer, but I don’t think he has much work now.
“The Presidential elections are important in June. After that there will be a leader people voted for. Unlike all the other leaders like Mubarak and those before them, this new leader cannot make decisions just for themselves. They will have to listen to people.”
I mentioned the big names.
Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei- “People in Egypt did not know him until the Iraq War. He is popular with the very wealthy and intellectual. But people here say he does not understand Egypt because he has lived outside for so long”
Amr Moussa- “He is liked. He was popular when he is the leader of the Arab League. But some people think he is too old”
The too old bit shocked me a little. In a country where leaders seem to be considered youthful if they are on the sunny side of 70, I thought 75 year old Moussa would still be considered somewhat sprightly.
My friend said he thinks he would vote for Dr. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh Abdel Hady (I think I was not taking detailed notes!)- He described the former Muslim Brotherhood member as moderate and “he would be in the middle of Egypt- not too left or too right. He is somebody I think we would need.”
I said my goodbyes, but before I left he saw the article I had been reading in the Egyptian Gazette.
“Ah yes, this is the TV interview that was a disaster.”
The article was about a TV interview that had been conducted with one of the leading, very religious Salafists politicians Abdel Moneim el Shahat.
The interview had proved shocking to some Egyptians. Shahat spoke about the role of women he envisaged in an Islamic Egypt ( …shall we say a little restricted!), he attacked the writings of Naguib Mahfouz as “inciting promiscuity, prostitution and atheism.” But most bizarrely, he turned his mind to the artefact’s of Ancient Egypt. He had form on this topic…
“For instance, he is notorious for his statement that Pharaonic monuments should be covered up because, according to El-Shahat, they are from a “rotten” culture that does not worship God. This also caused outrage among archaeologists as well as those who work in the tourism sector, who have further accused him of sabotaging one of Egypt’s main sources of revenue.”
He “moderated” his message on the TV interview, saying that the statues did not have to be covered up but should be covered up in wax…so people could still see them if they must.
The Sphinx in Wax.
The man in the coffee shop laughed.
“It was a really bad interview for him. His party lost many votes because of it. And he himself did not win his seat in Alexandria.”
But el-Shahat’s Salafist Al Nour Party did win many votes in the first round of the elections. What it means I’m not sure.
Cairo does not feel like Tehran 1979 to me. It feels like a varied, safe, exciting city going through a period of rapid unpredictable change. But still many Egyptian liberals and left wingers are concerned.
Egyptians are proud of the Islamic aspect of their identity, but for most their identity goes beyond that. It is not narrowly Islamic, it also involves pride in the Ancient History of their country, the modern literature of people like Mahfouz and also the Christian and other aspects.
We have to hope for every man who wants to pour wax over the Sphinx and other ancient statues, there are many more who like spending some time with a westerner in a coffee shop, talking with pride about their country’s rich and varied culture.
Let’s hope it is the latter that emerge victorious in the growing cultural war here - Insha’Allah.
Photo shows the Sphinx from the back. Ready to pounce on anyone who wants to cover it up- or pour wax over it! Originally published on Arab Spring on My Mind on Sat 10th of Dec.
Discussion
Leave a Comment
Sins of the Father
Subscribe by Email
Best of the Web
EU Should Admit Greece is Bankrupt | Christian Rickens
The unvarnished truth - the second Greek Bailout should not have happened.
The mistake isn’t the size, but the construction of the bailout package. It isn’t geared to the requirements of the people of Greece but to the needs of the international financial markets, meaning the banks.
How else can one explain the fact that around a quarter of the package won’t even arrive in Athens but will flow directly to the country’s international creditors? The holders of Greek government bonds are to get some €30 billion as an incentive to convert their old paper into new bonds. The aim is to keep alive the illusion that Greece isn’t bankrupt — after all, the creditors are voluntarily forgiving part of the debt. The financial sector is cleverly manipulating the fear that a Greek bankruptcy would trigger a fatal chain reaction.
That leaves €100 billion. But that too isn’t geared to what Greece needs in order to get back on its feet. It’s linked to an estimate of how much debt the Greek economy can bear without collapsing. International technocrats agree that with debts amounting to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the country can just about go on servicing its debt. That’s the level at which the cow can go on supplying milk without dying of exhaustion. So 120 percent became the goal.
Collaboration, with our European partners | Cunning Hired Knaves
The European project was supposed to be a bulwark against the dangers of fascist ambition, but now it is the instrument used to dismantle European democracy in the interest of the risk adverse looking for a steady income stream from the provision of the social net by those who cite the words and actions of old fascists while doing so.
The post Collaboration, with our European partners by Richard of Cunning Hired Knaves summed up in one sentence. For much better sentences and many more urgent points read the post.
On Sunday there were massive demonstrations throughout the Spanish state, with half a million people on the streets of Madrid and 450,000 in Barcelona, protesting against the labour ‘reform’ planned by the Partido Popular, the right-wing party that most closely represents the interests of the power elites that conserved their position when the transition from dictatorship to democracy was undertaken.
S.P.A.R.K. protest at cuts to lone parents, Dublin 18th February 2012
Many families were cut in the last budget but lone parent families were particularly hit by the Fine Gael/Labour Party government.
The key elements are that single parents can’t take advantage of training such as Community Employment (CE) Schemes and when the youngest child turns 7 years old, the parent is declassed as a lone parent but treated as an ordinary worker even though there are few affordable creche places. There is a bill coming up in March which will copper fasten some of the worst elements of government plans.
There is particular anger directed at the Labour Party because they are associated with women’s rights and a more progressive society.
Please share the link to this video
Exiting the euro | Michael Roberts
Michael Roberts argues that those in Greece who cite the example of Argentina when suggesting that Greece should leave the Euro are not necessarily looking at the whole picture. The situations are not the same, Roberts points out, citing Argentina’s former central bank governor at the time, Mario Blejer and his recent piece in the Financial Times. He also points to research based on the the experience of five recent devaluations of economies in crisis (including that of Argentina) which “shows that they lead to a 10-20% fall in real GDP and take five to ten years to recover to previous real GDP levels. But that is not to say that there is no alternative to “lowering wages, privatising the state sector, reducing taxes for the corporate sector (especially big business) and ‘deregulating’ labour markets i.e. the super-exploitation of the Greek people to raise profitability.”
But the left could also find an alternative policy to exiting the euro where Greece negotiates a full default on its debt to private and foreign bondholders; takes over the banks; and uses the savings from bond and interest repayments (€17-20bn a year) to start state directed investment in jobs, technology and funding small businesses, while staying in the euro to protect the savings of the people from destruction, keeping down inflation and avoiding a rise in foreign debt. The question of exiting the euro then becomes an issue for the Euro leaders to impose (and to be resisted by a campaign within Europe), not as the main policy plank of the left.
Corporate tax avoidance: where are the worst offenders?
This table comes via the Tax Justice Network (and Richard Murphy). It’s from a table produced by U.S. researcher Kimberly Clausing and as TJN notes “demonstrates which countries are working hardest to wage economic warfare on the United States (and, by extension, on other countries,) via the global tax system”.
Solidarity campaign to support the people of Greece
Mikis Theodorakis, famous Greek composer of Zorba’s Dance, and Manolis Glezos, veteran resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation, have issued a call for a European Front to defend the people of Greece and all those facing austerity. We have decided to support this call and work with trade unions, campaigns and parties across Europe to establish a European Solidarity Campaign to defend the people of Greece. We will organise solidarity and raise practical support for the people of Greece; they cannot be made to pay for a crisis for which they are not responsible.
Chris Dillow | Capitalism against freedom
[...]
During the Cold War, opponents of communism routinely, and not entirely wrongly, claimed to be champions of liberty. Freedom for capitalists and freedom of speech and thought go together, it was claimed. “Freedom is indivisible” wrote Bruce Winton Knight in 1952. “Economic freedom is…an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom“ wrote Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom. And back in 1944 Friedrich Hayek complained that “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”
Today, though, this seems wrong. Many threats to freedom come from capitalists. The story is no longer capitalism and freedom, but capitalism against freedom.
Ian Stewart | The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash
In The Observer, Sunday 12 February 2012
Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.
The equation itself wasn’t the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren’t appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.
Greece: a Sisyphean task | Michael Roberts
In a Eurozone that is unwilling to share its surplus with weaker, hardest hit economies there is no other option for those economies but default. Despite the agreement of Greek politicians to shorten their political life and accept the deal all that they have done is simply postpone this eventuality once again. However, even that postponement might be shortened by the Greek elections in April where the smaller leftist parties outside the coalition currently have 40% of the vote. Or so says Michael Roberts:
Whatever the Greek coalition leaders agree to and try to implement, such is the weakness of Greek capitalism, it will not be able to meet its fiscal targets or get its debt down to reasonable levels. Before the end of the year, the Troika will have to report that Greece is not delivering. Then the EU leaders will have to decide whether they ‘let Greece go’ or not. The EU leaders have agreed to more money for Greece (or more accurately its bondholders and banks) in return for draconian cuts in living standards in order to provide more time to try and ‘ring-fence’ other vulnerable Eurozone states like Portugal and Ireland (where they are preparing extra funding). So when Greece goes down, it will not affect the rest (or so the EU leaders hope). Of course, the Greek people may force the issue earlier if they vote in an anti-Troika government in April.
As Greece stares into the abyss, Europe must choose | Maria Margaronis
Do we really want to live in an economic union that must destroy the future of millions in order to just tick along? Maria Margaronis points out that the situation in Greece today says little about Greece and everything about the EU.
The trouble with historical metaphors is that they can obscure the present: what’s really at stake here is not Greece’s identity but Europe’s. All eyes are fixed on Athens, but the way out of the crisis requires a choice about what kind of Europe we want. The one we have now, with its deep structural inequalities and its rigid adherence to a failed economic ideology, protects neither democracy nor human rights. Stiff-necked and punitive, it prefers to eat its children.
We welcome and encourage lively discussion from the public about articles on Irish Left Review. You can leave a comment using the form at the bottom of the page. Please read through the existing comments before posting your own.