10 years
A precarious state that seeks to pretend and occupy a space as if the past didn’t occur is untenable.
The theme I have encountered today or perhaps, I picked up on because it resonate beyond hollow words of hindsight, is imagination. Imagination is mine and yours. It is the space where you and I are what we want to be and the world can be what we envision. We contribute to each others and are involved in its creation. In 2011, we tried to bring that imagining to reality, but were met with forces our imaginations did not adequately prepare for. Hope carried us away and continues to be our linchpin.
So, while they can crack down and disappear our bodies, now that we have seen and tasted dissent, they cannot and will not remove that from the landscape of our imagination.
This does not mean they — yes again, the arbitrary they — because the movement in Egypt is not an isolated one; it is part of a global one against a system whose manifestation and its guardians are the military in Egypt — won’t try. They will persuade us with narratives that we are on the way to change, just a little while longer. Keeping us in the eternal waiting room, while they build their reinforcements and tighten their grip around the preservation valves. And when we get tired of waiting and demand results, we encounter the brute force that was silently underpinning the niceties. That is where we currently are.
We are in an adjourned state. And while we look back and try to draw lessons in hindsight, I think it important to admit that we are in a precarious state. And that, to me, is a hopeful state because it indicates more to come. A precarious state that seeks to pretend and occupy a space as if the past didn’t occur is untenable.
I don’t know where we are on the trajectory of change, but I know what has passed and I know that we have changed. We have changed and are grappling with how to translate that into the world.
I will leave us with a quote two quotes:
- “To live without hope is to cease to exist.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “What matters is not to know the world but to change it.” Frantz Fanon
