CAIRO - Abandoning her domestic chores, Rokia Mohamed, a housewife, rushed to open her laptop and write a comment on the social networking website Facebook, after she heard the news about the storming of the Israeli Embassy in Giza last Friday. She did not rebuke those behind the attack. Instead, she used satire to criticise them, like most Egyptians do when they face problems and crises. “The Egyptian people have bought freedom, but they forgot to ask for the instruction manual, which is why they keep trying every button,” Rokia wrote sarcastically. “I wrote this comment because I feel that the revolution is veering off course. We must face this reality, in order to solve this problem as soon as possible,” she told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. What Rokia wrote is really expressive of the way Egyptians are feeling nowadays. They are perplexed. They don't know what to do, what is going on and what is going to happen. The sense of ambiguity shrouding the political scene in Egypt has led many young Egyptians to commit foolish acts like storming the Israeli Embassy and the Security Department, both in Giza. Galal Amer, a satirical writer, commented on this sense of ambiguity in his column, 'Dancing Words', in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper on Wednesday. “The peoples of the world do not know what's going to happen in the future, but the Egyptians don't know what's going on now,” he wrote. In reaction to an incident that shows total disrespect for the law and the sovereignty of the country, many other Facebook users resorted to satire to lament the good old days of the 18-day revolution, when Egyptians felt a sense of unity and shared rosy dreams and aspirations. “We need to be kept occupied again, in order to regain the sense of unity that we enjoyed during the revolution. We have to put an end to the fragmentation which is destroying everything we have struggled for,” wrote Mai Ashour, an Egyptian living in Saudi Arabia, on Facebook, sounding bitter and depressed. Some thinkers have also been satirical about the state of chaos and lack of respect for the law in Egypt nowadays. Galal Amer criticised on his Facebook page the attack on the Israeli Embassy by saying: “The one who flatters 'the public' is more dangerous than the one who flatters 'rulers'. I have always fought against Israel. I refused to shake hands with [then Minister of Defence] Shimon Peres and I raised my shoe in front of [then Prime Minister] Menachem Begin. “I was in Cairo [last] Friday chanting slogans against Israel. But your real friend is the one who tells you the truth. We won't get Palestine back by using the heroic poet Antara's method [i.e. by using force], but we can by using the scientist Mesharafa's method [i.e. by using our brains],” he added.
