CAIRO - Other countries celebrate the New Year and Christmas with trees, presents, lights and banquets, but in Egypt Christmas is being celebrated in a different way this year. For the second successive year at the same time, Egypt has been hit by a brutal terrorist attack, designed to generate fear across the populous country. While Egyptian Orthodox Copts were celebrating New Year's Eve in a church in the coastal city of Alexandria, a car bomb went off at 12:15am, killing 23 people and leaving more than 90 injured. The shocking attack in the very first hour of the New Year angered Egypt's Copts. “I'm really shocked by what has happened, I can't understand what's going on. For me, everything has turned black and I will not celebrate any feast this year,” Nader Noshy, a 21-year-old Copt, told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. Nader, like most Egyptian Copts, has been expressing his anger in simple, but very effective ways, such as replacing his coloured profile photo on the social networking site Facebook with a black-and-white one, with the word ‘Mourning' written underneath, as well as joining in the demonstrations. “Nothing will prevent me from going to church, on the contrary, such acts of terror will only push me more to go to church,” says Teresa Hanna, 27, who says that there is a hidden hand behind all that has been happening and that the Government must do something. “I will attend Midnight Mass wearing black, in memory of the martyrs' souls, as will all my family,” says Marina William, a 20-year-old mass communication student, adding that she had started to feel that Egypt isn't her country anymore. “I'm very afraid, but this won't prevent me from attending today's Midnight Mass; if I'm going to die there, it will be an honour,” she stresses. Last year, an attack on churchgoers happened in the Upper Egyptian city of Nagaa Hamadi on the same occasion. This was followed by a few weeks of talking, protesting and condemning the attack, which left six Copts and a Muslim guard dead. “It's really unfair. These terrorist attacks destroy the happiness of the feasts for us,” says Laura Saad, a 16-year-old Coptic girl. “I'm starting to forget what the word ‘feast' means in Egypt.” Since the blast in Alexandria, Egypt's Copts have been fasting and praying, with most churches holding special prayers for the repose of the souls of the victims. “I'm taking my family to Alexandria for Christmas and we're going to visit the martyrs' families and the injured in hospitals,” says Raed Saeed, a father of two in his fifties.
