‘Look, a camel,’ someone shouted, and they all crowded to the window to see their first camel of Egypt lifting its proud, world-weary head…
-Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy
Irfa’ Ra’sik, Inta Masri, Lift Your Head, You Are Egyptian, they shouted during Arab Spring in Midan Tahrir, Freedom Square, but that was just the problem. Tahrir had been renamed Midan Sadat after their President-for-Life, until with a bullet he reached the end of his thirty years earlier. There you would raise your head only to see the government’s looming Mugamma’ Building, the nation’s horror film set for bureaucratic nightmares, where every Egyptian’s self-pride went to die in triplicate.