on Hope

It was a cold Tuesday. It was that kind of Tuesday when things are in one state then you go to school and when you come back things are different:

I wake up, drag myself out of bed, I can hear the clamor of plates and closing cupboards in the kitchen in addition to the soothing Fairuz singing “ysa’ed sabah’ak ya h’elew” in the background. I’m telling you it was just another Tuesday: the water is cold so I turn on the heater and go down to have breakfast while the water gets warm. I have the staple of our household: Zaa’tar and Labneh with a cup of tea and some slices of fresh apples. I run late and have no time to take a shower, so it makes no difference whether the water gets warm or not. I wash my face and go to school. Just another Tuesday: walk down the sidewalk-less streets and greet my uncle down the street while he is hunched over his Arabic tobacco, idly rolling his cigarettes just like my late grandfather had done. Just another Tuesday that it seems redundant for me now, even after 8 years, to talk about the classes I had and the conversations I engaged with in the recess. Even the walk back up the steep hill of Al-Marah to our house is just another walk up the steep hill of Al-Marah. I walk upright and I greet the cemetery with a gesture of recognition of death. But all of this is not important, what is important is what happened in between. Sometime I wonder how history passes right by our face, and we’re only aware of it when it’s at the end of the path, casting its heavy shadow upon us.

Arriving home, I find my dad preparing lunch ( the usual fried potatoes and schnitzels – I’m telling you it’s just another damned Tuesday, but it’s not) and his gaze screened on the TV, almost missing my body barging into the picture. My brother is also home, and he too stares at the TV (not sure if he understood what was happening or whether he was doing what my dad was doing). In an attempt of simple humane gesture of belonging and curiosity: I look at what they were looking: Aljazeera news channel showed mass protests in Cairo, Egypt. People called it “Day of Rage” choosing this date specifically, as it coincided with “Police Day” in Egypt. Huge numbers, countless faces taking over the streets and shouting as loud as they can to have freedom, to take matters into their hands, to down the dictatorship and build their future.

It was only until the 11th of February when Omar Sulieman announces the resignation of president Husni Mubarak that that Tuesday becomes clearer.

Perhaps clearer, but still evading full grasp for its euphoric nature: the flame was lit and Prometheus stood there looking into its prosecutor’s eyes defying the odds. Blood was shed and tears were poured, hearts were torn, bodies were violated, throats were screeched from screaming, and the streets changed their appearance: they’re no longer desolate and obsolete.

During this time we thought things can actually change, that as Abnoudy puts it “the youth has turned autumn into spring”. That feeling of being so happy and being so far, of listening to stories of Egypt, of watching the protests, of the crying, of a weird mixture of death and life. Bittersweet confusion of a sort: people were being killed, but there was a purpose, a vision, there was HOPE.

I’m telling you about hope. It was unusual Tuesday. It was when Hope was born.