• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2327 0

now seen by many as the most effective challengers to the incumbent government, were still banned and other independent candidates were required to have the backing of at least 65 members of the NDP-dominated lower house of parliament. When opposition groups loudly voiced their unhappiness, security forces cracked down and threw many leaders in jail on questionable charges. Soon after, the banned Muslim Brotherhood took responsibility for two isolated terrorist incidents aimed at foreign tourists in Cairo. The bombs continued at popular tourist hotspots in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and Dahab in 2006, claiming a total of 122 lives, many of them Egyptian. Several groups claimed responsibility, the dissatisfaction with Egypt’s recent entanglement in the Gaza strip adding momentum to extremist factions.

Things didn’t change much in the 2008 council elections, when a further 800 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were jailed. Few voters even bothered to turn up – members of the NDP were running uncontested for about 90% of seats. More recently, rising global food inflation has further fanned the flames of social unrest, reaching flashpoint in 2008 during violent clashes over spiralling bread prices. The government raised its already high subsidies for wheat and sent in the army to guarantee supplies, hardly appeasing a populace tired of nearly three decades of life under a state of emergency.

Egypt Today

On the surface, it seems that Egypt’s economy has heaved forward in recent years: growth hovers at 7%; record foreign investment floods in from moneyed Arab states; and tourism seems to have rebounded from Sinai’s spate of bombings. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Egyptians still live in a grinding poverty that tarnishes any outward signs of success. While the threat of an Islamic uprising seems remote, the deep dissatisfaction with the status quo will continue as long as basic wages keep falling far behind the spiralling costs of staples such as food, fuel and building materials. Ballooning government subsidies for basic goods alleviate some of this shortfall (at the cost of a sizeable budget deficit), though many today feel that more profound changes are needed to take the country forward.

Return to beginning of chapter

THE CULTURE

With the second-highest population in Africa, Egypt is also the most populous country in the Arab world.

As for the genealogy of present-day Egypt, one Italian traveller summed it up best: ‘I look at the Pharaohs, I look at the Egyptians… I just don’t see it.’ While the blood of ancient Egypt no doubt flows in the veins of Egypt today, centuries of invading Libyans, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs have helped dilute this to a trickle. Traces of independent indigenous groups do survive, most notably the nomadic Bedouin tribes that settled in Sinai and Egypt’s deserts, Berbers around the Oasis of Siwa, and dark-skinned Nubians, originating from the regions south of Aswan that were swallowed up by the High Dam.

With the largest population growth in the Arab world and limited arable land, the strain on Egypt’s crumbling infrastructure is an ongoing problem. Signs of social unease have been bubbling to the surface in recent years, provoked by extreme inequality and a general dissatisfaction with the pace of political change.

Return to beginning of chapter

RELIGION

‘If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.’

Naguib Mahfouz

About 90% of Egypt’s population is Muslim; much of the remainder is Coptic Christian. Most of the time, the two communities happily coexist. While Islam permeates most aspects of Egypt’s culture, from laws to mores to social norms, fundamentalist flavours of this religion are still quite rare.

Return to beginning of chapter

CAIRO

02 / pop 18 million

Upon arrival, the choreographed chaos here hits you like a ton of bricks. It doesn’t take long, however, to acclimatise to Cairo’s wall of noise, snarl of traffic, cry of hawkers and blanket of smog, and get drawn into the hypnotising