Al-shaab yurid isqat an-nizam

Voices in unison chant and ring out into the air of the Square; strong, determined voices that reverberate with pride off the concrete of office buildings, minarets and steeples. Voices chanting from every direction. The infamous words in incessant refrain: “Al-shaab yurid isqat an-nizam!“ - the People demand an end to the regime.

We had thought, with the wide-eyed foolishness of Arab Spring revolutionaries, that with the end of Mubarak’s reign those words would no longer need to be uttered by hundreds of thousands in unison, that the bloodshed and tyranny would end, that dignity would be restored and that all would become free. But realities, like blazing meteorites from an all too familiar space, came crashing down on every dream we held up to the sky since that glorious day in February of 2011. Since that day, every Egyptian revolutionary confronted each of the country’s demons one by one: an omnipresent and omnipotent army, tenacious to its relentless hold of the country and unapologetic for its calculated ruthlessness; a brainwashed population, initially refusing to the see the sinister undertones of political Islam and unsympathetic to the plight of minorities; the crippling weight of dysfunctional bureaucracy; and a state of petrified paralysis that infected all arms of government .

So when our scruffy, bearded knight in holy armor took office in June of 2012, vowing to uphold the principles of the revolution and to ensure that Egypt, going forward, was to be a democratic and inclusive society, we all wanted to desperately to believe him. And though I detest political Islam in its modern forms and always doubted his sincerity, I found myself at times sneaking a smile at his diplomatic coups. After all, he stood up to Iran and Syria. He respected the treaty with Israel. He reached out to China and the United States. He even brokered a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Time magazine could be forgiven for nominating him as their “Person of the Year”.

But in the end it seems it was Morsy who was truly wide-eyed and foolish. A day after brokering a cease-fire between Gaza and Israel, Morsy sought to consolidate his newfound esteem in one sweeping constitutional declaration pronouncing his office an incontrovertible source of law.

No sir, as you may have figured out by the ocean of people in Cairo’s biggest and most iconic square today, we will not watch as you turn back the clock on our dreams. We may be battered and bruised, but we are certainly not done. Meteorites enter the earth’s atmosphere every day, but you should know that at best they eventually end up cold stone buried beneath our feet.

Be part of the dream, retract the declaration now.

Mohamed Mahmoud Street

Mohamed Mahmoud Street never was what you would call an ordinary street. Even amidst the surreal jumble of the old and glorious colonial buildings of downtown Cairo, now covered entirely with a permanent frown of soot and dust, and juxtaposed with run-down shacks, kiosks and donkey carts clogging each and every vein and artery the city needed to survive; even amidst all of that, the Street held an undeniably disquieting character.

The Street runs from one of the world’s most opulent palaces of the golden era of the Kingdom of Egypt, Abdeen Palace (completed in the late 19th century by French architect Rousseau), to the now infamous Tahrir Square. It is studded with unkept yet splendid architecture, the impeccable carvings and magnificent doorways heavy with the burden of nostalgia and year after unrelenting year of burgeoning population growth and a culture of neglect.

I knew the Street well. I attended university on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. The American University in Cairo was founded in 1919 by missionaries from the United Presbyterian Church of North America. Though increasingly regarded in the Mubarak era as the ultimate symbol of Western neo-colonialism, the university was built by those missionaries in hopes of contributing to the education and standards of Egypt’s future leaders. And whilst it is arguable how true to that aim the university has been since its inception, the Mubarak era, characterized (among many other things) by the gaping abyss that separated the 1% haves from the 99% have-nots, shaped public perception of the expensive university such that it was regarded by most as a rich-kid party-school.

And sometimes that was not entirely false. I used to joke, when I thought it was funny, that walking through the gates of the Main Campus out onto the Street and into the city was similar to putting on the Ring of Sauron – like Frodo Baggins in the Shire, the carefree tranquility and peace behind campus walls immediately evaporated as you were consumed with an onslaught of distorted noise, bizarre visions and sweltering heat. You waded through the cars, people and other random objects in search of the safety of your serene, air-conditioned car, often driven by your grossly underpaid driver.

But unlike Frodo, the more we experienced the harsh reality of the world outside our comfort zone the less able we were to clearly see it. Access between the university’s Main Campus, facing Tahrir Square, and the Greek Campus and Library was only possible by traversing the Street – and many of us did so on a daily basis. And every day, in those few hundred yards, we saw it all. The beggars, children barely in their teens and their mothers standing by the campus gates (unless they were shooed away by security guards, in which case they stood a few more yards away) persistent in their solicitations. The self-employed valets, who over many years established a degree of notoriety for their trustworthiness (and the size of their daily revenue), picking up and dropping off shiny cars to bored girls who are usually too distracted on their cell-phones to notice either the individual handing over the keys or the incongruity of their tight, ripped jeans and bright low-cut tank tops in the otherwise conservative, poor neighborhood. The street vendors, catcalling and whistling at the blonde women, all the while wiping away the day’s dust and despair from their foreheads.

At the time, nothing in what I saw around me seemed unusual – I grew up in Mubarak’s Egypt. I was not alarmed by poverty or the obscenity it often created. I did not think twice about how garish the smallest display of wealth was to the ordinary passer-by. But in the wake of the uprising and revolution that toppled Mubarak, the more I think back on the sights and sounds, the vivid emotional memories that the Street produced, the more I realize that the Street was a microcosm of the ailments of Mubarak’s Egypt.

And when Tahrir Square overtook Tiananmen Square as the symbol of an intrepid and a fundamentally human resistance against tyranny, the Street became a focal point in the battle. And rightly so, after all, the evil of the Mubarak era was not all encapsulated in Mubarak – the tyranny was perpetuated by those of us who cared too little to change the world around us, even when we had every ability and influence to do so. The tyranny was perpetuated by the sense of entitlement many of us held, and the apathy we displayed to those of us who were less fortunate. Now as I see to this day (with the rise of the godless Islamists and the hopelessly inept leader they produced) young men and women fall to their death, coming from every background and creed our ancient country has produced, I cannot feel anything but immense pride at what they have accomplished, and immense shame at how long it took many of us to realize there was something fundamentally wrong in our society.

Mohamed Mahmoud Street, at this moment in time, and in every sense of the word, is a battlefield. The walls of the university are covered with bullet holes and freedom graffiti - the asphalt with blood, stones and broken glass. But this, too, shall pass. And when it does, let us not forget the love of country and of our fellow man, which we now have all learned at a dear, dear price.

Monday

I’m sitting at my desk after walking through the streets we wandered less than 24 hours ago. There couldn’t be more of a difference. The calm, polished and abandoned alleys from yesterday are now frantic rivers of black umbrellas and raincoats, with the sound of heels echoing against the stone facades. I swam in the midst of this river feeling acutely aware of your absence. You’ve brought so much joy and warmth to my life, thank you for making this bleak Monday morning shimmer with the memory of your eyes.

Self-acceptance

Where do you draw the line between forgiving yourself for who you are and seeking change? At which point does one recognise that forgiving oneself is not bringing about the desired effect? Those of us with self-awareness are constantly finding the faults – some bigger than others – yet we are constantly bombarded with two schools of thought, two diametrically opposite antidotes that promise a cure. ON one hand we are told you are in perpetual sin, and that change is necessary for salvation. On the other you are told that imperfection is perfection, and that your faults define your experience and growth,

A lot of rehabilitation programs (for drugs, alcohol, etc) do not believe in a conscious effort to change yourself. The harder you try, the harder you will fall it seems. From experience these seems accurate. What they do preach is accepting who you are and that mistakes are inevitable – the idea being that through that acceptance you build self esteem that by nature rejects any kind of self harm. You trick yourself, in a sense.

But what if you’re aware of the trick? Is it possible that in some cases you accept and refuse to build form there?

A New Dawn

I don’t usually write posts about my professional life but I thought I’d make an exception, seeing as I have been utterly uninspired to post pedantic psychobabble in a while.


Yesterday was the first day of my new job in the City. Somehow I managed to pull myself out of the quicksand that was my Magic Circle legal profession in Canary Wharf and throw myself into the unfamiliar and niche world of private equity investment on Throgmorton Avenue. It was both a difficult and easy decision. Difficult, because I deliberately left behind any semblance of a comfort zone I had every known over the past 4 years of working as a lawyer. Easy, because in those 4 years I developed a hatred for my job that I think few can match in magnitude.

I needed a fresh start, and by some stroke of unimaginable luck I managed to get it in the world’s largest asset management company.

I slept well the night before the big day (Monday), probably as a result of the bedroom acrobatics I exercised between 5am and noon on Sunday (thanks, Mike). I got up with a healthy amount of anxiety, bordering on first-day-of-school-what-will-the-kids-think-of-me syndrome. True to habit with all new endeavours or experiences, I had decided to get up a little earlier than I should just to walk around the City and feel more centred around the new space. You could call it marking territory – but instead of urine I identified points of interest: the nearest sushi restaurant, the nearest taxi rank, the nearest Ladurée etc. As I was walking around just before 8.30am I ran into Ian from Standard Chartered Bank, the Cedric from Kirkland & Ellis. That’s when I realised I needn’t really mark this territory further – it was already mine.

I can’t really sing, but if I could I would have bastardised Frank Sinatra with a rendition of “What a difference, a job makes”. There is almost nothing in common between my old and new job, and it seems that everything (with the exception of the facilities of my new building) is a stellar improvement. Without going into much detail as to how, friendly reader, here’s what’s in this story for you: sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to ricochet into space. Sometimes you have to insist on your success even when you see dead ends and technicalities. Knowing you deserve better and observing the mechanics of your life closely affects such mechanics and alters them by default.

In the gleam of the night fantastic

Are you anything like me? If you are, you are night creature.
What is it about the fading sun and the twinkling lights of London that inspires an almost mandatory sense of invincibility. Is it escapism (from the bland weather, from the propriety of an imperial capital or from the harshness of the Europe’s most urbanised city) at its best? Or are we a city a of indulgent hedonists that know no limits?
I am but one of the wayfarers. We can all describe each other pretty accurately – novelty is not part of the formula. We are addicted to the social orgy that is this city. We use this city and it uses us, but to this day I cannot quite ascertain who is winning. Between the clinking glasses in every den of inequity to every eruption of laughter from every player (or marionette?) in this game the plot continues to thicken, but the denouement is déjà vu. 

Mr Right

Desperation. It's unseemly, so much we all know. So when Svetlana sat me down next to her on the burgundy velvet sofa of a her opulent 18 century hotel room in Roland Gardens (pupils dilated, somewhat unsteady and voice deliberate with exhaustion) and told me never to despair after men, I knew exactly what she meant. Or, at least, I thought I did.

Youth can be the most powerful of opiates. Though absolute freedom and immortality are intelligibly impossible postulates, one still behaves with the carelessness of a free immortal. Time is cheap, so wasting it is less of a concern. This is no less true when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships. One gets more attached to a feeling, and high, than whether or not the partner in question is a long-term likelihood. One wastes a shocking amount of time with horrible matches, all to be labelled in retrospect as "learning experiences".

But most of us grow older, and realise how much time we've wasted on these lamentable "learning experiences". We hope they've equipped us with the knowledge of what it is we are looking for. We hope that the ship has not yet sailed and that there is room for two more passengers on board. Some of us keep hoping for a long, long time.

I've gotten a bit older. And with my 26^th birthday I suddenly feel an unusual push towards finding a long-term, stable relationship. Not necessarily one that lasts forever, but one that I can benefit from and whose wide, protective leaves I can grow under for at least a few years to come. Haven't you heard? It is no longer about finding the right man – rather, in reality it tends to be when a man finds you during the right time.

Enter Ronald (circa 2 weeks ago), a handsome 30 year-old English corporate lawyer from London. Sophistication drips from the very consonants he enunciates with his received pronunciation. And, despite his Downton Abbey-esque exclamations in the boudoir ("genuinely extraordinary!"), coitus has proved to be a forte. In a lot of ways, he's perfect.

I'm not wildly in love with Ronald. I think he's very attractive and I enjoy the time we spend together. I want more, but I am not obsessing about it or aching for it. That worried me at first, but then I realised, in all my "learning experiences" where I have been insanely head-over-heels and pining for someone it has always come to a crashing end. This is an opportunity to take things slow and see where they go as a mature adult. Maybe in time I will fall in love with him. But that time is not now, and not for a while.

Besides, dating another lawyer already seem a little polygamous. We both fall asleep hugging each other and our blackberries.

New | Beginnings

The new year is around the corner. And never has there been a time when a new year was this needed. I have never been the superstitious type – attaching patterns of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to artificial measurements of time (after all, the new year used to start in March, which is why October comes with the greek prefix “octo” or “eight” and December with the greek prefix “deca” or “ten”). That said, I cannot ignore the fact that the past 15 months or so have been the most challenging in my lifetime.


There are two ways to come out of calamity and tragedy. One is to let it eat you up and become a former shadow of who you were. The other is to grab fate by the balls and command it, imposing your own will to live happily and confidently, a phoenix of sorts, more glorious than its previous incarnation.

But where is the fork in the road? What are the qualities that you need to adopt to ensure you fall on the right side of the history that is your life? Does one pursue small, incremental changes or does one dare to jump outside the box altogether and bear the brunt of it all?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions. But I think I need to believe that I will have the ability to make the right choices, even if up until now I have failed so many times. Life may be a box of chocolates, and you may never truly know what you’re going to get, but you can always ensure you go at each piece with hope and faith that milk chocolate praline is only a taste away.

So what of this new year. Quit drinking? Quit drugs? Rather than imposing changes by forcing subtractions from one’s life, maybe it is best to add a new passion to life, one that will drown out the negativity and bad habits. One that will salvage your soul and keep you afloat in the ceaseless storm of survival.

A new passion. A new hobby. A new man. A new job. A new life.