When the war Began
I was asked to contribute to this blog but it is very difficult to say anything meaningful about massacres. To offer at least a historical record, I decided to share with you these diary notes I wrote when the war began. I was living with Egyptian workers in Dubai at that moment. I have not edited anything, also not passages where I now think I was wrong and others where I contradict myself. I have added some missing words, translated Arabic expressions, clarified unclear passages and corrected typos. I have marked those clarifications with square brackets.
Dubai
7.10., 23:05 back at the accommodation after a nice afternoon out.
Meanwhile in the news, Hamas has been able to organise a major attack against Israel, much bigger than in any of the past wars before, surprising indeed in its extent, crossing the border fence and seizing villages and towns on Israeli side, killing people and taking hostages, and seizing military equipment, and lots of rockets on top. I’m impressed because it’s the first attack by them ever that actually has anything resembling an attempt to win rather than just causing pain and provoking a violent counterreaction. But I’m also devastated because it is obvious what will happen next. They don’t have the force to hold their gains, and they are not being exactly decent in their warfare either, aiming as always to kill as many civilians as they can because soldiers are harder to kill. 150 Israelis have been killed so far and we know how badly Israel has avenged the killing of one or two people. This will result in a terrible bloodbath, and I have to exert restraint to not comment to my progressive Egyptian friends on Instagram who are either celebrating and cheering, or بيفتوا فتاوى [pass judgement] moralising against unspecified decolonial scholars who (they claim) are silent when real decolonisation happens: “Do you support decolonization as abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” Well, it might be a tangible event of decolonisation if they had a chance to win or a plan how to win (leaving aside the fact that the progressives would not be very happy about the shape of Palestine ruled by Islamists, but it will take much longer for the world and local political situation to reach the point where it will be possible). I just see more death and darkness. (But then it’s not the first time I’m wrong. But this is what I see now.)
[...]
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8.10. in Starbucks at 12:15 after having a nice and sweet video call with Asmaa who is struggling with her thesis presentation. My intellectual progressive friends are almost without exception sharing excited and celebratory content about the outbreak of the war, especially about Hamas fighters entering and seizing places in 1948 territory, which is a first since 1948. But I’m just estranged because their joy is so smoothed out of any disturbance. Using nice diagrams of gliders landing over settlements, no photos of people killed (they only do it when Palestinians are killed), and full of righteousness about Palestinians reclaiming their lands. I fought hard to not get involved in debates, but I could not avoid writing to two people that I don’t think that entering a town and killing and seizing whomever you can but having no force to keep that town amounts to reclaiming your land. Interestingly, here in my immediate circle, not only T. but also S. is doubtful of this. The latter knows somebody from Gaza who expects the worst now, is very afraid. He also thinks that the attack, spectacular as it is, has no chance to keep its gains, only results in huge retaliation, and argues that there is an Islamic norm that in war you are only allowed to kill men, not old, women, and children.
I say that I have a 5% hope that this will be the beginning of a more or less permanent if not satisfactory peace (October War to Camp David style) where MbS can rise and shine as the great peacemaker. But it’s unlikely with Netanyahu and other radicals in power in Israel, and with Hamas and other radicals as the most credible voice in Palestine, and 95% I expect more death and darkness.
Asmaa today was helpful to put things into perspective for me: you didn’t grow up with the قضية [cause] she reminds me. And it’s true, those progressive intellectuals who are so critical of many things in their country, also identify with its causes in a strong way, stronger than a mainstream conservative office worker here may do. And they are willing to see everything the way that makes it suit their قضية [cause]. I have become more sensitized to it in last years, more sceptical of قضايا [causes] if pursuing them requires such a degree of filtering. I think that supporting 2011 [revolution in Egypt] and seeing what came of it has been a transformative experience in this regard.
[...]
8.10., 16:20 in Charleston café, after breakfast I wanted to be alone and the room was full, and was fed up with Starbucks and overpriced mediocre coffeeshops, after a moment of hesitation at the metro station I decided for Qiyada and Charleston café where I used to meet L. and Z. whom I btw didn’t call this time because I didn’t feel that it clicked in the last times, and they didn’t text me either, so I thought that I don’t need to follow up with everybody I know this time, it’s ok. And I forgot that the café stinks of shisha like all Egyptian/Arabic cafés and I hate the smell and the sound of football commentary annoys me, but then this is just part of my bad mood today.
The good part is that they have good Turkish coffee. That’s an improvement from Starbucks.
[...]
H. is more optimistic but also torn about what will happen in Palestine, M. seems to be informed by a mix of conspiracy theories, T. thinks that we can only sit and watch anyway, I read analyses that [interpret] this attack and the terrible price Israel will make people of Gaza pay [as] an intervention [in] the ongoing negotiations of normalisation between US and Saudi, because if the latter are successful then that’s it, then the cause of Palestine as an armed struggle towards ultimate victory is over.
My brain is in urgent [need for] peace but I’m unable to find it, and I keep interrupting it with social occasions like the breakfast (my initiative) and the planned shrimp dinner with H. from Giza. And now my brain is in a state of irritation by the constant football commentary. I need a real day off.
مش طايق لنفسي خالص النهارده [I can’t bear myself today at all]
But leaving Abu Hail and having a tea in the early evening moist heat in Union Park cleared my head, and now I can at least try to do some work in one of the other cafés in Ghurair mall.
After midnight:
I had dinner with H. and T., helped H. revise his CV and was about to get into sleeping mood, when Ustaz A. joined us for a tea, and of course started discussing about the situation in Palestine. He is an Islamic Egyptian nationalist, with anti-semitic views to a conventional degree, but he is a respectful person to debate, listens and replies, and if he thinks you made a correct point, he admits it. But then his son R. joined and started lecturing to me a loooong lecture about the history of Germany and why Germans were right to hate the Jews, based on hard facts he learned from YouTube. Basically, an iron hard anti-semitic conspiracy theory, and not accessible to any discussion, with no sense that I might know something he doesn’t know, and I got into a completely pointless and useless debate with him. With Ustaz A., there is a respectful exchange of views even while the views are irreconcilable, and being in that exchange mood, I was foolishly carried out into debating with his son and I regret that I did, because it just made unnecessary noise and nothing else. When I gave up and let him speak, hoping that maybe he would then be done, he just went on about why Abdel Nasser was the cause for all bad things in Egypt since his time, and wouldn’t stop, and in the end I called T. and asked where he is, to join him for a tea. I found him with a group of former airport colleagues, among them N. in front of the Ibis, discussing the streetwalking and appearances of three sex workers, not far from us, one of whom according to H. was the older one of the two we [had] helped to find accommodation [last January]. S. was saying they’re too fat for him, the topic of sex lead to the story of somebody making a sexist comment on a Moroccan woman on the street, and the woman مسحته بالأرض بالشتيمة [swept the floor with him by means of verbal abuse] which N. narrated in a way that made everybody laugh, especially about the volume and strength of the شتيمة [verbal abuse] the guy got. This inspired stories of situations where the guys or colleagues of theirs had made inappropriate or flirtatious comments at the airport and had been reprimanded by Arabic speaking passengers, and one had gotten a warning and salary deduction. All this was narrated as funny anecdotes, not as moral examples in one direction or the other. Awareness: Harassment gets you into trouble. Also awareness: it’s funny and not something to be ashamed of.