The phrase ‘Arab Spring’ appears on the covers of nearly a hundred recently published books in English alone, with countless similar titles in other languages. Never has a temperate season been metaphorically stretched to accommodate such extreme agendas, from the romantic to the apocalyptic. Some call it a triumph of people power, the start of a transnational civil rights movement, the end of post-colonialism; others an Islamist takeover, the work of ‘hidden hands’, a harbinger of war. Commentators focus mostly on the power manoeuvres and economics, the threat or reality of violence, the maunderings of local and foreign heads of state. The result is spectacle, an objectified phenomenon shorn of its deeper meaning.
The Egypt described in most media is different from the one where I live. It’s a matter of what is placed in the frame; for instance, the ‘angry protesters’ as opposed to the families window-shopping and eating ice-cream a block away. ‘Hundreds of thousands of angry protesters’, the headlines blare, when I see maybe 10,000 Egyptians in Liberation Square, many of them couples with small children, neither angry nor protesting, only having a free outing, a chance to see other people, catch up on news, and, if single, perhaps to meet someone they like.
