An American in CairoSeptember/October 2019 215
days? What might that reveal about
religious observance, politics, and family?
And lastly (although hardly ¿nally), what
is the legacy o the hopes raised and
dashed, and the trust extended and
betrayed, by the 2011 uprising? Egyptians
were surprised by the depth o the
dierences among them exposed by the
revolt and its aftermath: the cleavages
between Muslims and Christians,
revolutionaries and reactionaries, liberals
and populists, patriots and nationalists,
the generous and the stingy, and the
fearless and the timid all mattered more
than they had thought. The future o
the country will depend to a great
degree on how these identities will be
expressed and reshaped, now that they
have been revealed.
Today, most o what Westerners write
and read about Egypt is still, really, about
Westerners. Whether ¿ltered through
the fascination o tourists justi¿ably smit-
ten with the pyramids or the indignation
o Western analysts understandably
disappointed by the autocrats, what we
are writing involves what matters to us.
Perhaps that is the best we can do. But
it means that what actually matters to
Egyptians is likely to remain buried, as it
were, under our own hopes and fears.∂Western commentators on the Arab
world. The toxic mix o tyranny and
anarchy that dashed hopes for freedom,
dignity, social justice, and prosperity
surprised and disappointed Western
scholars and political analysts; for many
observers, curiosity and excitement have
been replaced by resignation and even
resentment. As activists and Western
ocials castigate Arab governments for
human rights abuses, and Western
scholars warn their students away from
research that might be dangerous, much
o the Arab world now appears to be
o-limits even to U.S. students wishing
to learn Arabic. Meanwhile, apart from
arms dealers and oil companies, foreign
investors have turned away from the
region, worried about both bureaucratic
paralysis and political instability. It is,
to use Hessler’s term, just too dicult.
As a result, Westerners know less and
less about the quotidian lives o people
in Egypt—and more and more o what
they know is harvested online, from
tweets and blogs and Facebook posts.
Few Western reporters are based in the
country anymore, and Egypt’s media are
hardly free, much less representative.
Human rights groups estimate that Egypt
currently jails around 40,000 political
prisoners—an appalling ¿gure, but one
whose accuracy is dicult to assess. And
although I would like to know about the
status o these prisoners, I would also
like to know about the prospects o the
thousands o entrepreneurs in the
country. What are they working on, and
who is funding their projects? And
speaking o business, how are the captains
o industry who thrived during the
Mubarak era faring today? And is it true,
as the local press suggests, that fewer
people are fasting during Ramadan these