One shouldn't write during such times. Why would you? These are times of mass events that sweep everything in its way. Times when the value of an individual completely disappears to give way to the value of the crowd, when you don't exist at all unless you are a part of a huge determined crowd that is up to something and won't back off until they've had it. Times of action. Times of endless talking yet no one listens to anyone at all. Times when the progress of events is pushed by a force that cannot be seen nor understood. Times of uncertainty when you know everything and yet not sure of anything at all. Times when the future totally eclipses and no glimpse of it can be seen or even predicted.
Who cares what you think at such times? Who would want to listen? There is only the rallying, the cheering, the storm. History is in the make, and you either participate or shut up and watch. When the angry demonstrators are passing by you, you join them or you just step out of their way. There is no room for side-road rooting here.
You still exist though. Your life and the events tangle together yet find a way to coexist somehow. something I could have never imagined. When reading books or watching movies about revolutions, the focus on the events gives you the impression that life stops and holds its breath in anticipation till it's over. To have an on going revolution and still go to college in the morning, go home and study, take exams, talk to friends, follow the news, join the demonstrations (not that I do), discuss cardiology clinical tutorials and the uprising simultaneously, is something I could have never imagined. A modified on the edge sort of life but still a life.
You learn to appreciate small things you've always taken for granted. Like not having to worry about returning home before its dark. Like the luxury of worrying about how well you'd do on an exam instead of worrying whether the exam can be held under such circumstances or not, whether you'd be able to make it to the exam or not. Distant gunshots or screams arise some faint sense of curiosity in you but doesn't necessarily make you move out of your chair. Listening to the international news about street fights, explosions, shootings, snipers, riots and exclaiming "Thank God I'm not there!". Trivials as these things are, they mean security and consequently they mean everything. But security is never an unpaid for gift, for some nations they just have to get a job and work hard to be secure and that's it, for others they have to risk complete loss of everything they ever had -including their lives- in order to be secure, which is the most sensible paradox of all time, the paradox of a revolution.
Who cares what you think at such times?
Egyptians have chosen to play the game the hard way, that is the idealistic way. We have handed the revolution happily to those who we revolted against them, and now we are doing what should have been done long ago after so long a delay, too late that it makes you wonder if now is the right time for amendments anyway. We are paying the price of looking the other way and ignoring obvious facts for so long, we are paying the price of yielding to the continuously infused idea of not allowing this revolution to have a face, a trusted leadership that would take over, and instead leaving the masses, full of dreams of a better future and rage over long reigning oppression and tyranny, leaderless, processing a decision of action in 80 million brains, each with its views, interests, fears and hopes, leading into the current chaos we are marching through. But I won't go into that any furthur, because as I said, no one cares what I think.
How much would you pay to have a quick peep at the future to see how things would turn out? But all we can do is wait, and so we wait...
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