Egyptians create their own silver lining to coronavirus

Given the numerous civil society initiatives that have emerged during coronavirus, Egyptian writer and journalist Khaled al-Khamissi finds his faith in his fellow Egyptians restored – there is hope for the country after all

By Khaled al-Khamissi

The 10th-century Arab poet Abu Firas al-Hamdani gave us the following sentence: "On a dark night, the full moon is missed." That is undoubtedly the case on the one new-moon night of the month, but it doesn’t hold true in dark times. Because light always breaks through the darkness in various forms, however black the gloom might be. And it is these shafts of light that I can see now, in Egypt’s all-pervading darkness.

The situation in our country was certainly not ideal before March, and occasionally I couldn’t make out many glimmers of light. But since the measures to counter the pandemic came into force, and so many ways of earning a living have fallen away, especially for the poor, our ancient nation – people who have been used to practicing unity and social cohesion since time immemorial in order to save the lives of others – has been engaged in all kinds of endeavours.

Civil society assistance for those in need

I lived through a unique, historic moment for our country in January 2011, and I am now witnessing something comparable, seeing great numbers of individual and communal efforts to bring help to those in need. And I firmly believe that if the community was only given the chance, it would play a more active and influential role both socially and politically than it does now; its areas of responsibility would expand and increase in number, and be more strongly tied into the administration of public services.

Let me introduce you therefore to a few of these social-responsibility initiatives, because they are like yawning: you only have to see them and you’ll be doing it, too.  

In one of the villages in the Nile delta, the villagers held a meeting to discuss how they could collaborate with the local authority to help the community. Once they had debated what the village was most lacking, they began to clean public-service buildings like the post office and the police station every day, and to give financial support to women who were out of work and mothers who had no other source of income. Local teachers also began to record video lessons free of charge and upload them to YouTube for their students.

A woman walking through Cairo's Al Malek district (photo: dpa/Lobna Tarek)
Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe in Zeiten von COVID-19: Die Coronavirus-Pandemie trifft das Land am Nil besonders hart: Ägyptens Gesundheitsministerium meldet bislang 47.856 bestätigte Coronavirus-Fälle und 1.766 Todesopfer. Laut einem Bericht der Weltbank aus dem Jahr 2018 haben viele Ägypter entweder keine Krankenversicherung oder nutzen sie nicht, weil sie Bedenken hinsichtlich der Qualität der Versorgung in staatlichen Krankenhäusern haben.

In Cairo, meanwhile, for several weeks now an initiative started by a young woman has been providing hot meals to people who are sick with coronavirus and trapped inside their own four walls, in quarantine. The project’s resourceful initiator managed firstly to find enough families to donate food every day, and secondly to find families who would take over the food preparation.

And then there were the young people who agreed to transport the meals to those who were sick. The food is usually then distributed to the sick people by their neighbours – one of whom quite often also donates money to support the care of a sick neighbour.

A "people's committee to fight coronavirus"

Another young man has called the initiative he started the "people’s committee to fight coronavirus" – a name that reminds us all, with a certain wistfulness, of the people’s committees founded during the 2011 revolution. The aim of this project is to help day labourers and unskilled workers from the coffee houses, for instance, who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and are now without an income.

The young committee founder has been joined by a number of volunteers who collect financial or in-kind donations in order to put together parcels containing items such as groceries, convenience food, cleaning and disinfecting supplies, and soap.

Another initiative, again started by a young woman, has attracted around fifty volunteers and has already supported close to 1500 families from seven different nationalities. As the project’s initiator realised, a lot of people who have come to Egypt from other countries for work are now at risk of being thrown out of their apartments because they can no longer pay the rent.

The initiative aims to take over the rent payments for people who have lost their jobs in the past few months, and also provides families in need with aid parcels. A really remarkable project, which primarily benefits non-Egyptians.

Born of a desire to do good

Other young volunteers have taken on the task of shopping for the daily needs of families in whom one member has contracted the virus – meaning the entire household has to go into quarantine. Young activists are also joining forces to focus on helping people to find a hospital that is still accepting coronavirus patients.

Egyptian author Khaled al-Khamissi (photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)
Khaled al-Khamissi, geboren 1962 in Kairo, studierte Politikwissenschaften an der Universität Kairo und der Sorbonne. Er arbeitet als Journalist für ägyptische Zeitungen. Für verschiedene Spiel- und Dokumentarfilme war er als Produzent, Regisseur und Drehbuchautor tätig.

These are just a few examples of private initiatives born of a desire to do charitable work, which operate within well-known, local structures. And there are a great number of other such positive examples. The great thing about this is that the will to help clearly spreads faster than coronavirus can.

Light to counter the murky excesses

As soon as a person hears that someone is acting to help someone who is sick or in need, we find that he, too, is immediately willing to do something – and in fact, he will then take it upon himself to ask his friends and family whether anyone wants to support him in his efforts. And the best thing of all is the knowledge that these initiatives are mostly being started by young people, who have themselves been put under huge pressure by the current circumstances.

Of course, on the other hand, there are also some people who are exploiting the current crisis in order to make a fast buck. Suddenly, countless vendors have popped up offering tests to find out whether you have been infected with coronavirus, at eye-watering prices. They will come to your home to test you. How accurate these tests are, however, I really couldn’t say. And at the same time, a few private hospitals have drastically increased their already high prices.

My daughter tells me that the family of a friend who had the virus shelled out 50,000 guineas – that’s about 2700 euros – for a single night in one of these hospitals: 25 times the monthly minimum wage in Egypt. A form of shameless profiteering that unfortunately is only too familiar in our country and regrettably was to be expected, in light of the pandemic’s rapid spread and the lack of available hospital beds. 

But light is the only way to counter such murky excesses. And the light spread by the initiatives described here and other humanitarian efforts in Egypt allows me to look to the future with optimism.

Khaled al-Khamissi

© Suddeutsche Zeitung 2020

Translated from the German by Ruth Martin