Confusion in Cairo: A letter to my better half in Latin America

My Dearest Sister,

You asked if I am nervous now that I am finally traveling solo. I have just put my brother on a plane to Saudi, and the answer is yes, I finally feel the weight of being alone in Egypt, and it is strange…incredibly strange.

The past two weeks have hit me like a ton of bricks. The whirl wind that was “seeing my family” has come to a close and now I am left with nothing but my own musings.  I attempt the task of digesting the past 7 months and putting them into coherent thoughts but am trapped in the whirlwind of this new culture and it’s confusingly vicious mechanisms.

As soon as my parents left, my brother and I set off for Alexandria, a place we thought would be removed from the political tumoil of Cairo, but in reality a place which exposed us to even more protesting and controversy.

On every corner the Coptics (an old sect of Christianity) raised their crosses to the air chanting slurs of rapid Arabic, and on the opposing corner stood growing crowds of Muslims, their head scarves blowing in the wind as they clung to the Koran. They are literally burning each other alive inside their churches and mosques, they hate each other for no reason other than their opposing views of the same God.

Back in Cairo, the Copts and Muslims continue to clash, but the Muslims unify under yet another banner of hatred…Israel. The celebrate their support of Palestine by hanging rag dolls with the Hebrew Crosses spray painted in blue, necks broken, eyes inked in black x’s. We went to the protest two hours before it was set to begin in the infamous Tahrir Square (a place where not so long ago, all of Egypt, Copt and Muslim alike, had united against one common enemy, the oppressive President Mubarak) and the throngs were already in the thousands, predicted to be millions strong by mid-day.

I can only parallel the emotions have felt this past week with the way that you were overwhelmed in Molena.  I feel a tremendous sadness for the Egyptian people and for this part of the world in general. It was one thing in Peru, to see poverty at the hands of a faceless, ignorant, government, but it was a new kind of evil to see suffering at the hands of fellow man. Children screaming at other children, men burning Israeli dolls in effigy before burning Christian churches to the ground.  I am overwhelmed by the type of hatred that exists on every street corner here, topped by an all-encompassing poverty that claws at the shadily made buildings throughout Cairo and Alexandria.

I have so many questions. My brother has been hugely instrumental in answering many of them, coming from over two years of experience in the middle east, but I am dying to know what your thoughts would be here, especially as we come from 6 months in Latin America, where perhaps in the days of the Spanish conquistadors, religion was the main smokescreen for plundering and brutality, but now poverty is created by imperialism.

More than ever, I now realize that poverty has many faces…and however awful this is to say.. I prefer the poverty created by imperialism to this black culture of ignorant religious brutality.

Sigh, wish you were here Bech, all my love and confusion from Cairo,

Mand

An excerpt of a fabulous response by Ms. Emig

"It's amazing to think that all of those problems, conflicts, violence, and social unrest comes from a mis-understanding and pride (or is it simply blind stubbornness) over which religion is “correct”. I have done a lot of thinking while here at this Hare Krishna site about religion and about what it means to have a faith and to believe in something. And although I haven't really come up with anything concise or to convince me of what my spiritual beliefs are, I have once again simply come to the conclusion that all religions are pretty much the same, they all stem from mankind's desire simply to cling to something to explain the universe. So how do people then take this created ideal that they use to explain death, violence, and the unknown, to create more death, violence, and political unknowns? I don't get it. It's scary in a way really, what humans are capable of."