How tides of noble emotions have turned. Remember Tahrir, where all the masks fell, where labels disappeared, and where ideologies where naught. We cried together against tyranny and we were longing for ... something.
Easy for some to call that something "freedom". Some may even be presumptuous enough and say it was about specific fair demands. But that does not capture it, there was something more. Something too noble and delicate to describe. Something, that is to be felt, or maybe just whispered. Forgive me, for my powers of articulation fails me here. But that certain something was worth dying for. I may call it spirit of Jan 25, but that is just a label, it says nothing really.
I am holding to the memory of the noble gaze in the eyes of my fellow revolutionary. That certain respect and affection (still those words do not suffice). In that gaze I could clearly read that he/she would be happy to die for me. With that spirit nothing seemed impossible.
The greatest damage of the referendum was that it wounded that spirit. Now I look around me and I see leftist, liberals, salafis, copts, muslim brothers, and the ideologically unclassifiable. I see classes, different outlooks, drives, and goals. I wish we could have suspended all that just a bit longer. I wish we can do it again. That certain spirit needs to be invoked again while the memory of it is still fresh. That spirit needs a body though which it takes form in our life and heal the many wounds of division and separation in our land.
I long for a constitution that could be the embodiment of that spirit. It pains me to see many jockeying for position to promote their own ideological agendas.
Do you still remember that spirit? Do you want it to take form? Shall we try again to bring it about...together?
Labels: Jan25, Poetry, Revolution, Tahrir