I grew up as a teenager in Alexandria, back in the 1960s. My favorite place there was next to a small mosque named after Al Qaed Ibrahim Square by the beach, where we used to relax in the serenity of the cool sea breeze, listening to stories and dreaming of what could be as teenagers often do. I left more than 40 years ago. By those very same marble steps today is a battleground I never imagined the city would have to witness.

The leader of the recent coup-d’état in Egypt, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has called for popular support to fight those he has deemed “extremists and terrorists.” His call for Egyptians to demonstrate against the supporters of the first Egyptian president to be freely elected in its modern history has been criticized by neutral observers inside and outside Egypt. The opponents of Sisi have occupied the square of Rabia al-Adawiya in Cairo for the past four weeks with numbers oscillating between half a million during the day to nearer 1 million during the night, demanding the release and reinstatement of the elected president Mohammed Morsi; hence the army’s push for counter demonstrations, which have resulted in scores of deaths, and a clear warning for Morsi’s supporters to disperse or else. 

The stakes are getting higher by the day if not the hour. More than 100 lives have already been claimed in the last week or so. The Tahrir Square phenomenon, the Arab Spring, hailed as a prosperous new era for the people of the Middle East and North Africa, appears to be heading for an ugly finale.

By these old marble steps in Alexandria, I was told a story from biblical times. Solomon the Wise threatened to cut a baby into two halves to settle a dispute between two mothers who each claimed the baby her own. In a beautiful act of humanity, the real mother withdrew her claim, to save the baby’s life and avoid bloodshed. Today there are millions of genuine ‘mothers’ outside of Tahrir, who are weeping and fearful at the gradual division and ultimate loss of their country’s future. The Algerian civil war in 1991, where the military stepped in and the ballot box was abandoned and massacres ensued, taught us this very same lesson. Over 200,000 lives were later lost. The Arab world and, we in the West, are in desperate need for an initiative of similar magnitude to that of the real mother to avoid bloodshed. Regardless of which side one falls on, a country that stood together so triumphantly less than two years ago is now on the brink of civil war.