Please Stand By Me

By Hassan Elsawaf 

Over the last twenty years I have been writing about the pathetic state of my country. I am not doing anything resembling a professional analysis, nor am I privy to any confidential information. I have no axe to grind, no personal ambitions, political, financial or otherwise. My writing is based entirely on observations and personal analysis, in the hope that my modest contribution can make a difference.
Some risks were taken, since there is no way an honest appraisal of what is going on around us can steer clear of rocking a few boats. I do not stoop to the level of personal insults, nor do I make any unsubstantiated allegations. My observations are easy to discern by anyone not infected with torpor.
Yet that is precisely what most of us have contracted of late. We seem to have built up this bogus belief that things around us are fine, that there is hope in a future devoid of truth and that the situation is too precarious to allow us to see the difference between right and wrong. Even the well educated among us refuse to accept the notion that the Egyptian people deserve to be free, preferring to crawl into their cocoons of denial. Lack of education is seen as the main impediment to freedom, in the parochial superficiality of refusing to see lack of freedom as the real villain. Complacency over shocking moral transgressions and growing acceptance of clearly criminal behaviour for the sake of professed stability have become trademarks of a population moving inexorably towards an abyss.
I have just returned to Egypt after a two-month absence imposed by an ominous warning from several sources, signaling displeasure from a regime not accustomed to being criticized. Arrest and the traditional trumped-up charges were what I was told I faced after my writings were deemed risqué, even seditious. Preferring to conduct my defense from the safety of a foreign country, I have been focusing on raising my case to a sufficiently high profile level to make some noise if they do go after me.
More than my trepidation over what the ‘justice’ system in a country ruled by brute force can do to me, I was distressed by the attitude of most of my peers, friends, relatives and acquaintances. The overwhelming attitude was to point out how naïve I was to believe I could make a difference and how ungrateful I was to bite the hand that fed me, having prospered within the system. The implication here is that we are all slaves and that, if the regime allows us to prosper, we should be eternally grateful and meekly keep our heads down and our mouths shut.
I have no high-level contacts, nor do I seek outside intervention. I believe the Egyptian people are among the most competent in the world. All they need is to be free of oppression. I ask you to stand by me and, incidentally, by Egypt.