'One Foot on the Moon'

As Cairo seethes with rebellion, some historical context is helpful. Amos Elon, a renowned Israeli essayist and author, explored the Egyptian political psyche in a deeply penetrating piece for the New York Review of Books in April 1995. It is worth re-reading today. Elon died in 2004 at age 82.

Some excerpts:

"By simply turning a corner in central Cairo, one enters a different world and even a different sphere of time. A short distance behind the glossy steel-glass-and-marble office tower of Al-Ahram, the prestigious semi-official Egyptian daily, another age, another Egypt begins."

"Barely fifty yards away begins a labyrinth of narrow lanes where millions of Egyptians live in seedy shacks and dark warrens above and below ground, often without water, sewers, or electricity. ... On the broken pavement someone has just slaughtered a lamb and is cutting up its leg with a large saw. Barefoot kids wade through the dirt piled in the street. Used shoes are laid out for sale in great heaps. Clouds of smoke and dust and the stench of sewer water hang in the thick air between shacks of mud and corrugated iron."

"I sat up there by the window talking with one of Al-Ahram’s leading columnists. ... Then he said that, at the same time, Egypt had the best writers in the Middle East and some of the world’s finest astronomers, physicists, and cardiologists. He gesticulated dramatically. Pointing to the slums and to a complicated-looking electronic device on a neighboring roof, he said: “Here we are! One foot on the moon! The other stuck in the sewer!”

On Hosni Mubarak: "Cairo is full of jokes about Mubarak. He is described as 'the man who never ties his shoelaces,' a reference to his hesitating, heavy gait and his reluctance to make clear-cut decisions. At the gates of paradise, another joke goes, the guardian angel asks him to state his talents and abilities. He answers 'None.' The guardian angel says, 'Ah, you must be Mubarak.'”