Dancing Among the Dead in Egypt

Egypt’s Ministry of Health reported at least 51 dead and 268 injured in Oct. 6 clashes and street battles between rallies of Morsi supporters, residents of the neighborhoods these rallies passed through and police. You could say celebrations of “Victory Day” have turned sour in Egypt. Except that they didn’t. Celebrations went on as if nothing was happening. As if no one were even injured.

There are two parallel worlds bloodily coexisting now in Egypt: The world of the Brotherhood, where Morsi’s reinstatement is an uncompromising goal and where Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is the leader of a bloody coup, and the other world of the rest of Egyptians, where al-Sisi is a hero and the Brothers are traitors, an occupation force which has been ousted by their savior, who is liberating Sinai and the rest of the country from terrorists. There is little common ground between these two parties. So, while one party celebrates with music, bands and dancing, the other buries its dead and prepares for the next wave of protests to “break up the coup.”

In Al Masry Al Youm, Egypt’s leading independent daily, the headline on Monday, Oct. 7, read: “The People Celebrate while the Brothers Incapacitate.” State and independent television talk-show hosts put all the blame on the Brotherhood and compared their ouster on July 3 with the liberation of Sinai following the celebrated 1973 October War.

Morsi was reported to have become depressed on learning that his supporters failed to occupy Tahrir and other major squares as planned. Former Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, former chief of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Gehan Sadat, widow of Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt during the October War, who was assassinated by Islamists in 1981 following his peace treaty with Israel, attended army celebrations where an operetta was performed by a host of artists showing their support to the military.