Melissa Shales reflects on the Egyptian situation

 

This time last year, I was in the middle of a trip to Sudan and Egypt. A week ago I was in Oman. I watched The Social Network, the film about the founders of Facebook on the plane on the way over. Yesterday I spent the whole day gripped by Al Jazeera (Eng) and their coverage of Egypt’s Day of Departure. I watched the crowds in Tahrir Square while Twitter scrolled fragmentary rather darker reports of protests suppressed in Khartoum and Yemen and colleagues tweeted back of life as normal in Sharm el Sheikh.

It is a strangely gripping sight to watch from afar. I remember back to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ‘Velvet Revolution’. It was something light – easy to understand in many ways. It was about economics, about rejoining a divided society, it was led by poets and we all smiled and sang.

This time, we are watching a giant waking up and we don’t know what will happen next. Even the people who are waking it don’t know. They just want change. They want the right to make up their own minds – and they should have it. We do. But as we watch we have to take a huge leap of faith that all will be well and overcome our instinctive fears for the future.

What we can be sure of is that while the world is changing, tourism in Egypt will resume. I am looking forward to going back. I was in South Africa in 1994, shortly after Mandela came to power and the world was put right. The pride and euphoria of the people was extraordinary. If the democratic revolution sweeping the Arab world can keep Facebook and faith walking hand in hand, it will be a triumph.

For now, I can only wonder what Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, thinks of it all. I’d love to know.

 

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