Cairo Diary, July 10 (Early Morning): Ramadan in the Revolution

It's the first morning of Ramadan---a little after 5:30. For the first time I can remember, I hear birds in Cairo, loud chattering ones that persist despite the city's inhospitality to wildlife. I am seldom up at this hour. Many people in Cairo have been up for a few hours already. Or, rather, they woke up a few hours ago for suhour, the morning meal before the day's fast, and then went back to sleep. The people I see are mostly sleeping: guards in their guard huts, doormen in plastic chairs, a young man in a coffee shop is sprawled out on the seats inside. A man washes a car on my street, in this neighborhood probably not his own. A taxi heading down a perpendicular street sees me, reverses and approaches. I brace myself for a honk, the usual Cairene way of asking if I'd like to go somewhere, or communicating anything to anyone, fellow cars or pedestrians. But it is morning, and there is time and silence enough for a more civil interaction: he pops his head out the window and asks, "Do you want a taxi?" I am grateful he does not interrupt the unlikely and fragile sounds of the morning, and I shake my head and put my hand over my heart---the easiest way to say "no, thank you" here. A man sleeps next to his fruit cart on a piece of cardboard; another shields his face from the still-gentle morning sun. Another taxi drives past and flashes its lights at me, a gesture I likely would miss in the usual multi-sensory din of the day. One of the first people I see awake is Samir Mohamed Idris, the guard of a flower shop. "It's a catastrophe!" he exclaims when I ask about the events of the last few days. "A Muslim killing another Muslim like himself. Haram!" He hadn't attended any of the demonstrations. "I want the country to be good, for us to live. . . . for the government to have a conscience. . . . [I]f [General] el-Sisi runs I'd vote for him," he says. "He's brave. He's a man." On the effect of Ramadan on the national mood he says: "God willing, it will be good; there's affection between people in Ramadan." At 64, he has lived through Gamal Abd el Nasser, through Sadat and the October war, through Mubarak, and now this. Though no one I meet blames the army for the killings, everyone has sympathy for the victims. Samir stresses that although he has never voted for them, and never will, he doesn't want the Brotherhood to go back underground. "There's freedom now," he says, "There's democracy." The kind of democracy, that is, with ruling parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, with an army that removes those parties from power, and with violent confrontations and shootings in the streets between contending political forces. Mohamed Gad Hassan, 58, cleans his taxi on the main street. Though in his view it is clearly illegal for people to linger outside of military institutions, "of course it's not right" for the military to shoot at them; that is the closest thing to a critique of the military I hear this morning. There is mandatory military service in Egypt, therefore the army is perceived as being close to the people. "The people and the army are one hand" is a popular chant heard often in recent days as it was during the uprisings in early 2011 when the army refused to fire on the people in Tahrir square. On the Muslim Brotherhood and people's dismissal of them as terrorists, Mohamed says, "We're mixed." I think he means that "we Egyptians" are a mixture, but I'm not quite certain. "Sure, some of them are terrorists, but most are just normal Muslims." He insists that the country is not divided in any fundamental way. "On Friday the army will leave." He seems assured of a peaceful and complete transfer to civil authority. I'm not certain why. Yvonne Boutros, 70, doesn't want a military government either, fond as she is of the army. In her blue dress with a large gold cross hanging outside of it, she says matter-of-factly that while people are happy when he was elected, they want Mohammed Morsi out because in a year, he hasn't done anything. But as for the events of recent days, "so sad" she hangs her head. "They were just young people," though again, she too will not say that the confrontation was the army's fault. Our conversation ends as two other elderly ladies and an elderly man arrive to collect her. As I walk home I past the guards outside the Algerian embassy, they tell me they don't have time to talk. I ask if they are Egyptian or Algerian, though, and they are quick to answer, "Egyptian, thank God!" Some things still haven't changed. When I get back to my house, the same man is washing a different car. Usually there doesn't seem much point. But today, as the sound and heat and pollution of the city have drawn back, if ever so slightly, it seems as though his efforts might last the day, maybe longer.

Not a Civil War

On another note, I wrote this piece in The New Republic, entitled "Too Soon for 'Civil War': Mislabeling Egypt's Dire Situation Could Make it Worse." It opens:

July 8 was a bad and bloody day in Egypt. Fifty-five supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi died after the army fired on them. How exactly that came to be is disputed. Morsi’s backers—some members of the Muslim Brotherhood and others who say they support him because he was democratically elected—say armed forces shot them unprovoked as they were praying in the predawn hours. The army contends that unknown gunmen fired on its soldiers, killing one and wounding many more, and that the military then returned fire. The violence has led some observers to ask whether Egypt is on a path to “civil war.” On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Egypt was "moving in the direction" of one. And it is not only outsiders who use the phrase. So did Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, head of the Al Azhar Mosque, a center of Islamic authority worldwide. On state television Monday, El Tayeb said that “until everybody takes responsibility to stop the bloodshed, to prevent the country from being dragged into a civil war,” he would remain in seclusion. This marked the religious community’s second invocation of the provocative “civil war” phrase. On June 28, following clashes in the run-up to the June 30 Tamarod, or “Rebel” demonstrations, Al Azhar had said in a statement that “vigilance is required to ensure we do not slide into civil war.” The term’s recurrence in reference to Egypt raises threshold questions: Precisely what is a “civil war?” And what would it take for Egypt to become one?

For more of Laura Dean’s Cairo Diary:

• Cairo Diary, July 8: Piecing Through What Happened and Waiting for the Parasol Revolution
• Cairo Diary, July 7: An Outside Perspective
• Cairo Diary, July 6: A New Prime Minister, Maybe
• Cairo Diary, July 5: “Friday of Rejection”—and Violence
• Cairo Diary, July 4: The First Day of the Rest of Egypt’s Life
• Cairo Diary, July 3: Praying We Don’t Get Fooled Again