Reasons for Optimism

Perhaps in contrast to my post from yesterday (this the freelance journalist thing is giving me a lot of free time...), I wanted to write something a little less dour.  While on one hand there are many worrying things going on here in Egypt, there are still great people with great goals that I do believe are not out of reach.

February 28th cover of Time Magazine. Noor, pictured second from the left

There is a short little piece in the Guardian today by Noor Ayman Noor, the son of two very important Egyptian politicians, Gameela Ismail and Ayman Noor, and the piece (you can also listen to him interviewed along side a few other interesting Egyptians, one of whom is apparently pro-Mubarak, here) reminded me of a story about Noor (the son) that illustrates what kind of guy he is. Noor, who is the same age as me, was very active during the revolution despite having previously been very turned off of politics before the revolution.  On the second day of the revolution Noor was arrested in Tahrir and thrown in the back of a truck with 44 other protesters.  Among the beaten, bloodied captives happened to be a reporter from the Guardian who managed to tape an audio-only interview of sorts with Noor and the others in the darkness of the van as they were transported to what they would later find out was a prison in the middle of the desert.

At several points in the long, suffocatingly hot drive, the Security forces stopped and demanded Noor get out of the truck and leave the others.  He was to be released, they said.  They gave no reason, but being such a prominent son, it would look especially bad for the security regime to have arrested him, so they planned to let him go.  Rather than taking the escape route though, Noor refused to leave until they were all released, saying "either I leave with everyone else or I stay with everyone else; it would be cowardice to do anything else. That's just the way I was raised."  Maybe he knew nothing bad could happen to him thanks to his celebrity parents, but in such a harrowing situation, with his countrymen bleeding, fainting, and terrified all around him, I have to guess he couldn't have really known that.

I happen to have met and hung out with Noor a couple times, thanks to a mutual friend, and he genuinely seems like an intelligent, kind, funny guy.  But then again he is just the kind of Arab we westerners like to see, young, good-looking, speaks fluent English, plays in a rock band, etc.  Hence his inclusion on the cover of Time magazine in February shown above.  I like a lot of what he has to say about a lot of things going on in Egypt, but sometimes I fear that is just because I find him so easy to identify with?  Do I just want to like hi because he provides me with funny status updates on facebook that I sometimes understand?

Maybe, maybe not.  But when he says things like this, I find it hard not to like the guy:

"As time progresses we're reminded that the most difficult battle in this war we call a revolution wasn't the battle to bring down Mubarak, but rather the battle to bring to an end the corruption in society itself. Not corruption in the sense of embezzling money, but rather the corruption of our political, social and cultural values that has sadly been instilled in all of us over the past half century....

Sectarian tension is an obstacle we will face; people have lived under such harsh conditions for so many years that they've had nothing to lean on other than their faith. And when you have nothing but your faith this leads to fundamentalism and extremism. I strongly believe that if the current government takes the proper steps to address the issue hand in hand with the Egyptian people, if they develop the country and show Egyptians that there are clear-cut plans and alternative paths to change, then we can avoid violence. We should be working on a concept of citizenship that is not divided by religion."

His father is running for President this year, but frankly I not-so-secretly look forward to the day that Noor makes his own entrance into politics.  It's important to remember, even as sectarian differences and specters of extremism seem to be making inroads into Egyptian society, that this is also what the Egyptian Revolution has set free in this country.  Egyptians like Noor (and my housemate, who is another story), once disillusioned, intelligent Egyptians planning to leave the country as soon as they could, now are deeply wrapped up in the well-being of their new country.  That is pretty neat, I say.