ERHABIC
THINKING
The Family
This is my name, and this is my story. I was born in the year
1952, in the year in which Egypt was inside a tornado of transformation.
I had two brothers : Religious and Secular. Religious was existing since
the early times of the Ancient Egyptians, while Secular was born early
this century.
Our father, Egyptian thinking, was always thinking in
a unidirectional way. Whether Egypt was independent or occupied, he had
the one paradigm. The Persians, Greek, Romans, British, French, and Israelis
were for him nothing but aggressors; there were no other ways for him to
interpret their existence. Life, death and fate are in the hands of one
Mighty God, whether it is Aton, Amoun, or Allah. Egypt is his land which
he should defend and protect until victory or martyrdom, whether this was
against the Mongols, Crusaders, French or British.
My eldest brother, Religious, was my father’s first, and favorite
son. He was born in the time of Akhnaton. However, he changed his name
several time, contradicting our father’s great character of his personality:
the stability. He was called after the name of the great man Akhnaton.
Then he passed through a series of changes until he finally reached to
his last name Abd-Allah. Religious has two sons: Sufi, and Sunni. Both
of them are in a never-ending debate whether once should worship Allah
for the fright of the Hell, and the dream of the Paradise of Aden, or to
worship Allah because of loving him. However, they love each other. Sufi
is interested in love of God. Sunni is interested in how this complicated
materialistic life problems could be solved on the same base which solved
the problems in the Utopian city of the 7th century, Medinah.
Secular was born early this century. Secular was always eccentric
in his thinking. Sufi and Sunni suffered a lot with their uncle because
of their different paradigms. Secular thinks that his elder brother, and
his sons have nothing to do with the Political life in the country. He
believed that their place is the mosque, and their limits should not exceed
it. He had strong, charismatic, pragmatic, and Machiavellian character.
He was clever enough to reach rule in that tempestuous year
in which I was born.
In spite of the fact that Secular’s first directions were like
his elder brother, but as everybody knows how mutinous youth are,
he decided to abandon his brother’s ideas and to search for a new paradigm.
Thus upon reaching the position of power, he started to search for the
new paradigm.
Me
I was the smallest son. I admit it as a fact I had no character.
I had to look to Religious and Secular. Secular was not my preferred example,
nor Religious. I liked the way the people liked Secular. He used to deliver
strong speeches, and taking decisions that seemed for me so courageous.
Imagine insulting America, and fighting against three Super Powers. The
whole nation liked him. They used to sing for him. He was the most popular
from the Ocean to the Gulf. His image was the one in the heart of every
revolutionary anywhere, from Cuba to Algeria.
Secular was always in a continuous search for absolute power.
He shattered my logic by his doings: Claiming freedom and liberty,
and appointing a censor for press, announcing the non-bloody changes, and
hanging and mass-arrest for his opponents, especially the followers of
Sunni, stating democracy and practicing absolute totalitarian system, and
more. I was not the only shattered once; a lot of people were thinking
about that logic-less country.
They were thinking about the country whose defense minister
was a major, and then a field marshal after days of the revolution. They
were thinking about that great man who carried the title of the revolution,
and who was going to be hanged in case the revolution was aborted. They
wondered about Egypt’s destiny , which was burnt when it reached Egypt
from the British press. Egypt was a good place to wonder, but it was a
dangerous place to announce what you think.
Religious and his sons thought that when secular reached power,
he would give them a chance to better the country, and to search for the
Utopia. They did not want power, they just wanted the good of the country.
But Secular forgot everything, even his brother, in his search for the
absolute power. When he felt that Religious might be a kind of threat for
him, he avoided him and teased him. He knew that he would be nothing without
Religious, thus he appointed one of his grandsons in a political position,
in an attempt to get more power from the nation only.
Then it was the defeat. It was the defeat that shattered me
more. It increased the sense of hatred to my brother, in spite of my previous
appeal to his idea of absolute power. The defeat or they call it the setback
was an earthquake in Secular’s mind, and the first nail in his coffin.
He changed to a wreckage of a man. He decided to resign, but the hopeless
nation had no hope except on that man. They asked him to return back and
when he returned back the defeated nation danced. It was so strange that
a beaten nation danced for the return of the cause of its defeat.
After his return, he tried to make amends for what he demolished
in his search for the absolute power, however fate did not give him that
chance. He died. In the same day of his death I tried to remember what
I learnt from him, I found that it was nothing but the search for
absolute power.
After the death of Secular, the country was in a real maze. It was
the maze of the search for the leader who would wade into the battle of
liberation. Before his death, Secular appointed one of his grandsons to
be his successor. That grandson was also the grandson of Religious. Thus
he was a harvest of two extremes.
Supposed to sincere to the man who gave him the chance to the
chair of Egypt, despite this he worked hard to destroy that man’s history
and trying to remove his picture from the hearts of the people. In his
first years, he followed the same path of his predecessor. He claimed in
the first days that he was nothing but a continuation for the great figure,
asking the nation to put their pictures side by side.
The man’s heritage was difficult; he had to go through a battle
for independence, in addition he had to save the country from falling in
the deep trench of poverty. He put war as his priority. His ideas of war
was nothing but setting lights on the situation, and then negotiating for
his own land. That was his logic, opposing his predecessor who thought
of sinking the aggressor’s army in the sea. He was not thinking from
the Nationalism paradigm that Secular adopted. He forgot that there was
a holy city occupied, at a distance from his own raped land less than the
distance between his capital and his own natal village.
In his way to destroy the memory of his predecessor, he decided
to give me power. He thought that by helping me and giving me a chance
to exist I would help him to destroy Secular. That was when I appeared.
He took the decision of war, and that was his most courageous
decision he would ever take. By playing on the sensitive string of religion,
he managed to control the whole nation during the time of the war. Millions
were ready to die to free the raped lands, but that was not his own decision.
Deep inside him, he had the feeling that if he tried to challenge the super
powers he would change the relative victory he had achieved to a slaughter.
Despite his religious slogans, he forgot the divine promise of victory.
He decided to stop the war and to beg his lands from the aggressor.
Then I started to think, how come that man who claims himself
the religious president to forget that promise. How come did he accept
taking his lands, with incomplete dominance. How come that man who claims
being religious and he drinks, allows his wife to dance with the foreigners,
shake hands with the enemy. When our Sheikh said so in the mosque I was
shocked. First I did not believe, but when it became true I was shattered
again. How come that man who claims that he is going to apply the Islamic
Shariaa to insult our Sheikh in the nation’s assembly saying that
he is a dog-like creature. How come that man who claims that he is the
lover of religions, and then he exiles the Pope to the South. That were
the questions. However it had no answers. I and my friends reached to the
solution: that man should be killed, and it was.
He gave me the second lesson after Secular, which is: Religion
is the opium of the nations.
I am the one that you call now the Erhabi. I am a harvest of
these two people. I am in a continuous search for absolute power. I am
willing to kill and to fight whenever I find somebody to fund. Regardless
for the source, I am that Machiavellian, absolute power seeker.
Am I guilty, or am I a victim? Please tell me.
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