“The government used to steal our money,” Ahmad says with a sad smile on his face. “But today things are even worse. Today they steal our hope, too.” It is May 2007, and Ahmad and I are sitting in a street café on an alley in downtown Cairo where plastic bags and dust are swirling through the air. On the wall behind me a cockroach is crawling, and I try unobtrusively to move my chair a little farther away from it. All around us young and middle-aged men are smoking shisha, some of them chatting but most sitting in silence. A veiled woman dressed in black is performing as a fire-eater in the middle of the alley, but no one seems to be paying attention to her. Ahmad suggests that one of these days I should count the number of people entering stores in downtown Cairo who leave with a shopping bag in their hands. It won’t be many, he predicts. People can’t afford to buy anymore; the only thing left is window-shopping. We are sipping heavy tea that is bearable only with an excessive amount of sugar. But the tea is not the only thing that is heavy; so is the atmosphere. Like Ahmad, many friends during the course of my visit will explain that economically, morally, and politically, Egypt is going through a crisis. Almost everyone I talk to feels helpless, hopeless, and outraged about the ongoing war in Iraq and about the emergency laws that interdict all expressions of discontent within Egypt itself. “We’re living a nightmare,” people say when I bring up the topic of dreams.
-Amira Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter, pg. 1
