Egypt is Free Now

We watched the screen as people battled

for freedom. We are distracted, distant, not understanding

what had been thirty years of life beneath

the hand of a unsympathetic ruler, a non-Egyptian.



We onlookers stepped back, for the most part, still indulging

our habits, rituals, appetites, personal concerns

while the circle filled with brave people, young, old

workers, struggling to live, gave shout to their

frustration, resistance, an end-of-the-rope anger

standing together and against unjust power and wealth and

control and abuse and injustice and fears.



The long eighteen days filled with camaraderie and uncertainty, fears, confirmed as horses raced their terror

In the circle but left the people unchanged and more certain of their commitment. Those long days; rocks flying, fists smashing,

shouts and stand offs. Jobs abandoned, homes empty,

tents constructed, make-shift triage. The cost, the payment

for freedom is high, life threatening, no guarantees. Most

nations were bystanders from afar, hands off, watching with economic interests, fears of contagion and

political disease passing  throughout the east of the world. But revolution is no small act,

 no short term fix or unthought-of track. Who knows what might happen with this house-cleaning,

who knows whose hands will grasp the loose reigns of a country and government?



Most people never change! This individual revolution

is as rare as the revolution of a country. Some people

struggle, most stand under the self-regime

which has been ruling them for a lifetime, unaware.

Blind and inattentive to the hardships, injustice, oppression

in their own lives as they live within the power of self-rule.

Watching from the distance, outside themselves, an act rarely

attempted, and the reporters within, silenced, jailed so as

not to communicate the movement that is mounting deep

within. Fearful of the arousal and new consciousness which

might break through. So fearful and self-destructive is the movement

that the self totters in vertigo even at the whisper of  rebellion.


The ruler turns up the army’s vigilance and grants it extraordinary power to intimidate.

Maybe the ruler’s control comes with entertainment, shopping and gadgets

and devices for instant miscommunication, quick meals and wines, movies and warm houses.

The control comes like hypnotism from things and styles and GNP concerns, Wall Street gambling,

their  retirees futures guaranteed. This kind of human injustice, technologically driven,

is as oppressive and insidious as Egypt’s Mubarak.


No wonder they killed Jesus!



Richard W Smith

February 12, 2011