Egyptians living abroad want their right to vote!

The following text was written for the petition I lauched for asking to the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to reconsider their decision of deniying the right to vote for Egyptians living abroad. If you are an Egyptian living abroad and feel concerned about the denial of your rights, feel free to sign the petition here and share it with your contacts.

Indeed, The Egypt’s Military Council, in charge of leading the country since February 11th 2011 after putting an end to 30 years of Mubarak’s autocratic regime, decided to deprive Egyptians abroad from their right to vote. The Egyptian diaspora represents 4 million people living in 139 countries. Their rights as citizens were denied to them for the very arbitrary reason of the possibility of their votes being “sold” to non-Egyptian interests. The Egyptian diaspora is fully part of Egypt, and the Egyptians living abroad are therefore asking for their rights as citizen to be respected.

To: the High Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt

We, Egyptians living abroad, consider ourselves as fully Egyptians.Our reasons for migration are very different from one person to another, and very few of us consider living outside of Egypt as a deep aspiration. For many of us, it was merely a necessity: some had to migrate to look for a better living, sometimes being simply denied the opportunity to live decently in Egypt under the 30 years of autocratic regime, some others were forced to look for a safe place for they were haunted for their subversive opinions, some even work from abroad for the improvement of their country of origin (in International Organizations for example), some were also born abroad from Egyptian parents. What we have all in common is our love for Egypt and our concern for the future of our country.

We consider the denial made to our right to vote, based on the enventuality that our votes might well be “bought” by foreign interests is not only discriminatory towards us, but is also against the principles of the New Egypt we all wish to see blossoming. Besides being based on an unjustified and subjective preconception, it also sends a strong message to Egyptians living abroad: “You are unworthy to Egypt”.

We are aware of the technical difficulty to coordinate polling stations in 139 countries, but we don’t consider it as a reason for the denial of our rights as citizens. Not only many countries offer to their diaspora the possibility to vote, thus proving it is possible, but also this would mean that a minor technical constraint is stronger than our noble principles of freedom, democracy and unity.

We urge the Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, Chairman of the High Council of Armed Forces of Egypt to consider our determination to participate to the political life of our country and to give us our right to vote, regardless of our country of residence.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Dying of thirst in the middle of the Sea: a history of indifference

As war goes on in Libya, the flow of refugees to the neighbouring countries doesn’t stop. Estimations are difficult to do, but we know that besides the massive number (nearly one million) of foreign workers who left Libya at the beginning of the conflit and already went back to their country (let it be in Subsaharian Africa, North Africa or Asia), more than 150’000 Libyans crossed the frontiers with Tunisia, Egypt or Niger (for example nearly 40’000 Libyans have been quickly “absorbed” by the South Tunisian population , most of them hosted and provided in essential needs in Tunisian families although they are themselves in need, with such a fluency that even the International Organizations and the NGOs were amazed of the solidarity of the local population). A few thousands fled to Europe, generally through the Italian island of Lampedusa with their boats from Mistrata or other local ports. Men, women and children take board in overcrowded boats that sometimes fail in crossing the Mediterranean Sea and sink.

The sadest of these stories was reported by the guardian two days ago, about a boat that left Misrata with 72 refugees on board that came to visual contact with a NATO aircraft carrier, supposed to be the french Charles-de-Gaulle, and that made several attempts to drag attention (including a phone call to a Erithrean priest in Rome that alerted the italian coastguards that launched an alarm to urge any vessel in the neighbourhood of the boat of the refugees to rescue, following the law o the Sea that applies as well to military ships). Although these signals to the aircraft carrier and the two military planes/helicopters passing over the boat at low altitude, no help was given to the refugees. Ater the fuel tank emptied and the food and water stock finished, the boat drifted backwards towards Libya, and meanwhile 61 from the initial 72 people on bord died of hunger and thirst.

The NATO investigation is going on. Regardless of the details it will reveal, the conclusion will forever stay the same: 72 people escaped for saving their lives from the madness of war and 61 of them ended dying because of the indifference of those who were mobilized to protect them, because although they clearly saw them and have clearly received the signal of their presence, somewhere, the decision to not rescue them was taken. Let it be a dysfunctional  procedure or not, it is very likely that the ship’s company didn’t intend to let the refugees die but just weren’t keen to endorse the responsability of these 72 people. One can imagine they might well have thought the boat would have easily reached Lampedusa or any other Italian shore, letting to the staff on the ground take care of welcoming the refugees; in consequence they reached the conclusion that they can avoid dealing with a boat full of refugees. At every stage of the concerned hierarchy, then, there wasn’t the will – or the courage – to endorse the responsability of the migrants. Were simply the members of the staff of the aircraft carrier “afraid” to become a plateform used by Africans to reach Europe? After all, indifference to dramatic situations is sometimes no more than a shunning, a strategy to avoid the answers to the questions we fear.

If it is to be stated that, indeed, the aircraft carrier envolved in this event was the french Charles-de-Gaulles, it would become extremely revelant. France called for a freeze of the Schengen Agreement in order to close their frontiers to the Tunisian migrants given 6-months visas by the italian authorities, and the denial of assistance to the 72 refugees escaping Libya would be simply the continuation on sea of the official new French policy towards migrants. If the refugees were to be saved by the Charles-de-Gaulle, in stepping on the aircraft carrier, according to the International Law of the Sea, they would be considered as under the French law; in short France would have been forced to welcome the refugees, given the fact they cannot send them back to their country at war (a war to which France is participating). By letting the refugees on the Sea, thinking they’d continue to Lampedusa, they certainly hoped that the migrants would be welcomed by the Italian authorities. The question that remains would then be simple: were the members of the staff fully responsible of the decision of ignoring the refugees, or were they told/forced to ignore them?

Tunisian migrants of Lampedusa: France is shivering

During the last few weeks, Lampedusa was often quoted in European newspapers headlines. After the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, an increase in the number of Tunisian migrants reaching by boat Europe through the little Italian island at South of Sicily was observed. Reading the news, it looks almost like an invasion: how is Europe going to deal with this massive wave of migration? What is the appropriate thing to do? Issueing to the Tunisian migrants residence permits in the European Union, at the cost of encouraging more and more North Africans to cross the Mediterranean? Or send them back to their currently unstable homeland at the cost of having to face critics for treating African people without any sense of responsability or dignity after being life long partners of dictators such as Ben Ali or Gaddafi? Tunisian migrants, while waiting for the outcome of the debate over their fate, see themselves becoming a point of focus: journalists are almost as many as them in Lampedusa, protests of angry Italian are almost daily, Libyan migrants, escaping war, begin to arrive at the accomodation.

When finally Italy issued 22’000 3 months-visas to the migrants, allowing them to travel in Europe before to settle for a final destination, according to Schengen Agreement, a wave of panick sweeped all over Europe. France, where about 3/4 of the migrants plan to go, promptly reacted: first by stopping the trains between Vintimille (Italy) to France carrying migrants as well as Italian activists, then by calling for a temporary suspension of Schengen Agreement. Never in the history of European Union did one of the Member States ask for such a extraordinary measure. By acting so, France would threaten the unity of Europe, create a diplomatic conflict with another Member State, Italy, and deliberately get in the way of European economy, favorited by the open intra-European borders.

The Schengen Agreement defines itself which kind of circumstances allows a suspension of the Convention: when security of a Member State asks for it. To be able to ask for a suspension of the Schengen Agreement in order to prevent a massive migration from Tunisia, France normally should be able to demonstrate the direct link between the 22’000 migrants and security of the French territory.

As a physicist, I always felt confortable with demonstrations: in general, numbers lie much less than politicians. I tried to figure out how 22’000 people could threaten France’s security.  For the sake of the argument I assumed that 100% of the Tunisian migrants would try to settle in France; the French population would then increase by 0.03% = 3 Tunisians per 10’000 people. Each Tunisian has then to represent a significant change in the life of approximatively 3’300 people in France.

The impact of the Tunisian migrants cannot be as dramatic as depicted by politicians. Nevertheless, integrating them into national statistics is an easy way to show evaluate their contribution to France. For example, unemployment in France represents 9.6% of active population, and the 22’000 Tunisians would not even represent 0.01% of the active population, and more keen to work in the main understaffed sectors in France (catering/food industry, construction industry, etc). The median age of Tunisians in Tunisia is about 30 years in total and 29.6 years for men. The migrants of Lampedusa are in huge majority young men, perfectly healthy, so to say coming to Europe to work. Most of them speak French and come from rural regions of Tunisia, where the biggest part of the economy is provided by agriculture; it is to be noted that agriculture is the most understaffed sector in France.

So in the best case these Tunisians would be able to find a job and participate in France’s economical growth. French GDP per person was of 28’123 € in 2010. In the worst case they would not find any job and would benefit from the french social welfare (known as the Revenu de Solidarité Active, RSA). The RSA is a monthly fare of 466.99 € per person (=5’603 € per year). Meaning that a negative impact of the 22’000 Tunisian migrants in France can be possible if and only if for one finding a job and producing a substantial yearly wealth of 28’123 € worth, there should be at least 6 Tunisians not finding jobs and costing each 5’603 € in social welfare.

In other words, unless the unemployment rate of the newcomers is higher than 85% their contribution to the French economy would be positive. A realistic scenario would admit an unemployment rate for Tunisian newcomers a bit above national rate, certainly around 20% during the first year. By closing their borders to Tunisian migrants and putting in question Schengen Agreement, France is, in consequence, depriving the national economy from a very welcome help. Not only the immediate needs in workers in some sectors where French people don’t want to work would be partly fulfilled, but also in a demographic point of view, their presence can only be a good thing for the aging French population (amongst the oldest in Europe with a serious deficit of young people, only two decades before the “Baby-Boomers” reach age of retirement). History even already shown us that there is nothing to fear from this migration: after all, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutionnary chain reaction it induced in Eastern Europe, Romanians, Hungarians or Polish massively migrated; 20 years later, it is pretty clear that no invasion or negative concequence was observed in Western Europe.

There is certainly no reason to think that French authorities are not aware of these facts: for France, as well as for the rest of Europe, blocking the migration process could be painful more than anything else. The opposition to Tunisian migration can then only be ideological: fear from the Foreigners, from the unknown and misuse of this fear for electoral reasons. By calling to the suspension of the Schengen Agreement to avoid the Tunisian migrants and insinuating a revision should be undertaken, French President Sarkozy might well open the Pandora box.  At his own risks.

What educated people should learn from uneducated people

Education is the key. For everything: development, peace, health, freedom, democracy, human rights, end of racism and discrimination, global awareness, etc. It is with this leitmotiv that most of parents of arab/african migrants to Europe crossed the Mediterranean Sea: to offer to their children the oppprtunity to live in a stable environment where an education of high value is given. Studies show that the difference in education level between migrants and their children is bigger than for natives. Other studies show also that the migrant parents tend to be even more pushy with their daughters than with their sons to accomplish a grade in higher education.

Good news? Yes awesome news, but one little bad point, though. I started to notice a long ago that in general (of course this is not a general statement) that if I look around me for people like me, sons and daughters of migrant arab parents, that the higher the education level of parents is, especially the mother, the lower is the ability of their children to speak in arabic. To be more accurate, I came to the statement that this was particularely true for two categories of migrants: those coming from maghrebi coutries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and from Lebanon. One big exception though: it is false mainly for Syrians, for every Syrian born in Europe I’ve met, they were all speaking perfectly arabic. To illustrate my point, I remember this video I’ve seen long ago of the son of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri talking in front of the Lebanese Parliament, reading from a paper his speech written in arabic, with such a hesitant, with so many mistakes that the video was widely spread among Arabs. It seemed so incredible to see the son of such a famous businessman and politician, long depicted as a figure of success in the Arab world, owning even arabic speaking medias, having difficulty and making mistakes.

So the question is: why among the Arab diaspora in Europe the more (in general) moroccan/algerian/tunisian/lebanese parents are educated, the less children are able to speak arabic (not even mentionning writing)? For those who don’t live the diaspora from inside, it has to be pointed out that arabic inside arab communities in Europe is almost exclusively transmitted to children by parents, the small number of arabic courses for children being far from having the capacity of welcoming everybody (and do not even exist in every city). Anyway arabic courses do not help children to really speak arabic, I mean the arabic they would be able to speak with their family and friends, since fus’ha (classical standard arabic) is mostly used for writing; the speaking requires knowledge of local dialectical arabic (including berber languages even if of course strictly saying they are different from arabic) that can’t be transmitted by any other mean than listening and speaking on a regular basis.

It seems to be a total contradiction to imagine that a less educated father and/or a less educated mother are more likely to teach their children arabic. Actually, if you carefully analyze the situation it is not: the four country I mentionned, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Lebanon, have in common a very high tendency to value french culture. In these countries, intellectual elites tend to speak french, even when they are not together with a foreigner not speaking arabic. When you think of it, it is very absurd to be arabic native speaker born in an arabic country, going to school and losing a little bit touch with arabic (for example sciences are tought in french in high schools in Tunisia, lebanese authors like Khalil Gibran or Andrée Cheddid wrote in english or french instead of arabic), meeting your significant other and getting married, migrating to Europe and having kids (not necesseraly in that order) and… forget to speak arabic with them.On the contrary, so many of us, sons and daughters of migrant parents with lower schooling level remember speaking one language at school (english, french, german) and coming back home switching instantly to arabic. (For my case,  for example, my father being egyptian and my mother tunisian, I was trained to switch instantly not only between french and arabic but also between dialectal egyptian and tunisian.)

Is it because they have been themselves to school that they are more keen to rely on school to ensure fully the linguistic education? Or maybe because education paradigms in their native countries have succeeded in implementing the idea that arabic was not so useful after all compared to something as prestigious and succesful as english or french, and that it is not a big loss that their children didn’t learn it? Or because less educated parents are less fluent in other languages than arabic, “forcing” children to keep talking in arabic with them if they want to communicate? Or because less graduated parents equals to less takening careers or a more “traditionnal type” family, then more free time dedicated to children? Certainly a mix of all these different reasons.

Anyway, this appeals to an interesting conlusion: there is certainly something educated people should learn from less educated people. They should give a bigger attention to what they transmit to their child. Parents transmit education, values, but when they are migrants they transmit also culture and language. They are the essential and sometimes the unique link for their children with their country of origin. If they want their children to “feel at home” back there, there is no other option: they cannot chose the easy path. It is twice as difficult, but worth it.

The Awakening

Today I was at the cigar store of the train station, getting a pre-paid card for my phone. The shelves were full of newspapers and magazines of all kinds, of all languages. Most of the front pages were mentioning the Egypt protests, of course. One of them immediately caught my eye, mainly because of the picture I think – the portrait of a young man, the lower part of his face hidden by his scarf. It was the « Nouvel Obs » magazine, and it was titling « De Tunis au Caire, quand le monde arabe s’éveille » (From Tunis to Cairo, when the Arab World wakens). Wakens… awakening?

Definition: awakening [əˈweɪkənɪŋ əˈweɪknɪŋ] n the start of a feeling or awareness in a person

There is no day since the beginning of the worldwide mediatic coverage of the protests in Tunisia where I didn’t hear or read somewhere this word – awakening. Everywhere, I see journalists analyzing the events as the awakening of the arab word, the arab people, the arab street, the arab whatever. And everytime I wonder the same: what is before the awakening? Sleep or unconsciousness, isn’t it? Does it mean that we were worldwidely considered as being asleep or unconscious?

Maybe am I a bit touchy; maybe I shouldn’t think that much about what is – after all – just a word. But the fact is that everytime I am confronted with ‘the awakening’, I cannot help feeling slightly angry and insulted. Don’t we refer to awakening when it comes to the development of a young child gradually getting able to walk, speak or understand abstract concepts? Those who talk about the awakening of the Arabs, without any doubt, suggest that they were in some kind of lethargy until then, that unlike the rest of the people of the world, the Arabs were lost in some extra-dimensionnal realm of irrationality, unaware of the recent progress of History. There even was frequently journalists/analysts/politicians/whatever that were clearly assuming that our « slow » progress on the path leading to political and civil awareness makes it impossible for now to consider anything else than dictatorship for us. Very seriously. And that giving to Arabs democracy too soon could lead to disasters like whole nations falling into political-religious extremism, violence, chaos. It always sounded to me like a father explaining to his to his 16 years old son why he won’t give him the keys of the car: « Don’t you realize you would be dangerous for yourself and for the others? ».

When I read about « awakening », it makes me feel the same way than when I hear anybody saying that – I am giving you here a hint on how to get me mad in less than 2 minutes – « Columbus discovered America in 1492 ». Columbus did not discover America; the people that were already living on the american continent when he reached the shore were those who did. Or like when I consult some page on Wikipedia on some random african country and that under the section « History », the history starts… the day of the colonization of the country. As if the country was created out of nothing the day an army took possession of the land.

People tend to think that what they have not yet seen or noticed, do not exist; and when it becomes visible, they sometimes don’t get to understand that it is not an « awakening ». It is just that something was screening the view to any outside observer; like the Atlantic Ocean between Columbus and America.

Arabs, we, us, are not living presently our « awakening ». They always were fully conscious, fully aware. But this is what the oppression, after all, is about: seeing everything but being forced to keep silent. Being cautious; how to be anything else than cautious when you know that in some conditions, if you speak or protest, it’s your life, or even worse, your wife’s or husband’s, or your parents’ life that is treatened. And maybe it is because this heavy, unbearable barrier between the Arabs and their freedom of speech and act, the people in our countries always felt that much concerned about the palestinian or iraqi issue: it was the only political topics they could discuss without being put in danger; and read between the lines, it was the only way they were able to criticize their governments.

I always found for example that very few Tunisians will ever tell you directly anything about politics, but always amazed how most of them have an extended ability to give practical answers to overcome the issues created by the lack of citizen rights. As if they always were acting political (not in the derogatory meaning of the word) without speaking political. And when they found the first sign of weakeness of the oppressing entity, the movement was spontaneously initiated and followed. As for Egyptians, they have always been more keen to speak than Tunisians, but when it comes to acts, as they were living in certainly what is one of the most halting conditions you would ever imagine, they were making their way through paths you would never have guessed, and I always found them unbelievabily relaxed about it; just waiting for the right time to do the right thing. And it seems now the right time has come; the tunisian revolution was the triggering factor. Egyptians didn’t wait for that day to become aware of the political spoliation of their rights; they knew it already, it is just know it is also visible to the outside world: the view is no more screened.

Will the tunisian and egyptian protests be the triggering factor to other poeple (not only in the arab world) to defeat tyranny? I hope so and I think so. But again, they won’t create the awareness in other countries, they will just be what they needed for releasing the claims.

Hopefully this would lead to the awakening into a new understanding of our History.

Am I the citizen of three countries?

Although I have three citizenships (Swiss, Tunisian, Egyptian), I used to think, all my life, that only in Switzerland my opinion mattered, through my vote, and that dictatorship in my two countries of origine, and the fact I leave abroad, made my voice mute and useless.

I remember the day I received for the first time of my life, as a 18+ swiss citizen, my materiel de vote in my mailbox, it was in 2000 and it was a popular consultation on the rise of age of retirement for women from 62 to 64, I spent days reading all I could read about the topic, too afraid to make the wrong choice. The day I went to the polling station it was odd to me, I clearly felt for the first time of my life to not only be swiss or swiss african, but to be a swiss citizen who has her contribution to bring to Switzerland.

My parents have had Swiss citizenship later than I did – I was almost 20 at that time. The first time they received the materiel de vote, with their voter cards, I remember them so perfectly, laughing and grinning like kids oppening their Christmas Gifts, and telling me it is the first time of their lives they are asked their opinion through vote. At that time my parents were more than 40, but my father, egyptian, and my mother, tunisian, had to wait to be swiss in order to vote for the first time of their lives. I remember when they asked me how to proceed to vote; after the explanation I gave them I remember my mother’s first question was “But what do you think I should vote here? Yes or No?” (and all her life long we had always the same argument about the fact that every time we had to go for voting, she wanted to know what did I vote to vote the same) and my father asking me, while looking at the voting paper, where exactly does he have to write his name – above or below the  “yes” and “no” box?

The day I realized how strange it was to be on one side citizen of one of the most democratic countries – Switzerland – and on the other side “citizen” from two of the most repressive dictatorships of arab countries – Tunisia and Egypt – was the day I voted for the first time for a Tunisian vote. It was in 2002, and we had to chose wether or not we agree to modify the Tunisian Constitution. The Constitution was restricting the president to limited number of mandates, and the ‘popular consultation’ was about rising this restriction to an unlimited number of mandates – in other words, give the constitutional right to Ben Ali to stay a lifetime president. Me and my mother, with our voting cards, went to the Tunisian Consulate and were given the voting material. I remember the voting papers, one with “Yes” written in black on a white paper, “No” written in white on a black paper, and an enveloppe – a transparent enveloppe where nothing was easier to see the color of the paper inside of it. I asked one of the staff if I could have a copy of the constitution with highlights on the parts that are to be modified, he brought me a text telling me that the concerned parts were written in red…. but he gave me a black and white photocopy of the constitution.  When I entered the voting booth, I remember putting the white “yes” paper in my pocket, the “no” black paper in the enveloppe, together with the photocopy of the constitution, in order to make it invisible through the transparent enveloppe which one I chosed. After being out of the Consulate I felt melancholic and angry of how ridiculous all this sounded. When, In november of the same year, at the annual gathering of tunisians of Geneva at the occasion of our National Day, I remember the Ambassador self-congratulating about the successful vote and how each of us can witness how fair our democratic consultation was.

Presidential Elections of 2005 and 2009 were such a mascarade, with the same transparent voting enveloppes and the red paper for Ben Ali, who was re-elected with more than 95% of votes. I went to the 2005 vote to put all the ‘alternative’ candidates papers (4 or 5, I dont remember) in the enveloppe, embended in the red paper. I didn’t even bother going to the 2009 votation, for it was too ridiculous.

I never voted for any egyptian vote or election. I remember at age of 13 or 14 a conversation with my aunt Sohir (at the age where you believe so much in your own stuff that you really look down on adults who tell you about being realistic and compromise, etc, etc), where she said “why should I want for a president a guy we don’t know when we already have one we know? One has to be satisfied or God can send you worse”. And later I never asked for my egyptian voting card, after learning from my father that his Uncle, my grand-uncle Ebrahim was a ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ Society member (“Ikhwan el Moslemine”) and that the day Nasser established their illegality my grand uncle burnt everything, every evidence he had that he was part of the Society.

Before 14th of January I never felt my voice had something any interesting elsewhere than in Switzerland, first because of our democratic system, second because of living here, while I always felt useless to Tunisia and Egypt by dictatorship, but more because of the fact of living abroad – I always felt like I had no really any existence in my two countries of origin – as if I hadn’t “deserved” the right to be called citizen. To be citizen is to vote, but also to work in and for the country, to be part of the everyday life. And without any right to vote – really vote I mean – I was nor a political citizen, nor a factual citizen. Would any of my egyptian or tunisian fellows living there consider me ever anything else than some special kind of tourist (even if I don’t feel myself to be so), coming at summer because I miss the family and the country; because there, I dont own a car, I rent it, I dont see the kids growing up continuously, I only get snapshots? And that question always, alway asked: do you prefer Switzerland or Egypt/Tunisia? How to explain that I prefer none of them, I just dont really get the point of it, as if I was asked who do you love the more, your father and your mother? That despite the fact that I have the perspective to go back live in Egypt or Tunisia (or any muslim country, especially if I get married to a non-egyptian or non-tunisian) before I have kids – for it is clear to me I want my children to be raised in a country where they are not a minorité religieuse where people ask them (as it is a growing tendency in Europe since September 2001) if they are more faithful to Europe or Islam (as if a geographical location was any comparision with a religious entity) – I always felt so far I would be a citizen of Tunisia and Egypt only the day I will be resident there.

But After 14th of January, as Ben Ali stepped down, the perspective slightly changed: in six months I will be voting for a presidential election where my voice will count, whether I live abroad or not. How would I direct my choice towards one of the other of the candidates? Of course my choices are more driven towards the ideologies I believe in and away from those I don’t – the french-like ‘laicité’ opponents like Marzouki no way I’m ever going to give my voice to any of them.  But anyway, the gap that separates me and the day-to-day life knowledge of somebody living in Tunisia, how can I fill it? And now that I see that Egypt has started to follow the Jasmin Revolution path, and that things even go much beyond all expectations, the same question is to be relevant for Egypt also? I try, of course, to do my little own contribution with what I have in hand, but from far, is it enough, is it appropriate? How would I know? I’d certainly never know but now that first time of my life I had the feeling after January the 14th that I am not only tunisian person but also a tunisian citizen, not only an egyptian person, but also an egyptian citizen, the time is really coming for me to answer to THE question: I always knew I can be without any internal conflict a swiss and a tunisian and egyptian person, that I was a muslim-european and is not afraid to raise my voice for what I believe are our rights as europeans with a strong conscience on what we believe is our philosophy and contiousness as muslims, but now I am also another kind of citizen.

Can I really be citizen of three countries? Defend three Constitutions, look after the interests of three countries, one of them being neutral, the two remaining part of a cultural block that is not neutral? Feel three times patriotic, sing three national anthems? Or am I only one citizen, one citizen of one ideology, that has the right and the chance to participate to the implementation of the so said ideology in three different countries?

My friend Anais who is swiss with peruvian origins and with whom I shared my concern gave me, as an answer, a new question, a clever one. She asked me if I could imagine defending the interests of Switzerland/Tunisia/Egypt against any other interests of another country… to wich of these countries would I be able to fight and dedicate my life. Currently I am still trying to sort out the answer – and certainly I began to write this note not to give to the reader (who anyway is certainly not that interested in my own personnal inner debates) the answer to the question, but to find out what it is.

What I know for sure is that chosing between Egypt, Tunisia and Switzerland ‘s interests would it be like chosing between my father’s, my mother’s and my adoptive mother’s interests. I would never be able to harm any of them to defend any other of them, but I will always be able to give my own soul to protect any one of them if it is in my hand to do so. I do not share my love in three for them, I have three different loves. At this point I feel very lucky that I belong to three countries that have different interests, yet not really antagonist interests – not as if I were half egyptian and half israelian for example.

And what I feel now while I am writing these lines is that the one thing that stands in the middle, that links everything together, is not that I am european or african, or swiss or tunisian or egyptian, but that I am a muslim, that knows that only my moral values can make me chose not the interests of a country or another one, but the make me chose the right thing in each situation.

And maybe now I feel for the first time of my life what it is to be part of the Umma, the muslim nation: forget your frontiers but not your moral limits, don’t fight for your country with a patriotic resolution, regardless if the cause is just or not, but fight for your country to follow an ethical path. My two green passeports and my red passeport are not my identities, they are the pacific tools given to me to allow me to act for a change where I belong. Yes I am a Swiss-Tunisian-Egyptian person, a Swiss-Tunisian-Egyptian citizen, but above all I am the carrier of values which I deeply believe are my way to give the best part of myself to the human kind.

Masr wa Touness, Egypt and Tunisia

Why did I start? I don’t know exactly. I just know I needed it. There is much I want to say, there is much I have to say. Although there is nothing very interesting about it, nothing new, except for me maybe. Blogging is so egocentric, but aren’t nations, people, communities, no more than a collection of egos, all bound together by the counsciousness of their similarities?

I am born in Geneva, Switzerland – where I still live. I never lived anywhere else. My parents met here and settled for life here. My mother, from Tunisia, and my father, from Egypt, were my first and essential link to my arabity. When I was a child, we were used to go from year to year, from summer to summer to Egypt and Tunisia, Mars wa Touness. But if it was not the constant presence of Masr wa Touness in our home in Geneva, I would never have been an Arab, I would just have been a tourist visiting egyptian pyramids and tunisian white sand beaches. My chance has been to grow up within all mixed influences: swiss school during the week, muslim school at the mosque on week-ends, arab-north african ambiance on evenings and loving family on holidays. There are so much stories, and I read a lot of other people’s stories. I have certainly been blessed that I never felt torn between East and West: I always have been fully part of both. Speaking french, speaking arabic, not with the same fluency at the same time, but that never was really the point. Finding some of Egypt in Tunisia, some of Tunisia in Egypt, finding both of them in Switzerland; getting the real essence from where I belong.

I have all those memories arising, the elder telling dreadful stories where ghosts speak the countryside egyptian slang, the inner square patio of the traditionnal berber tunisian houses; my two grandmas baking their bread each on her own way (tabbouna wa forn);  the poultry yards and the cats in the streets. Smell of the jasmin flower, smell of the melted semna. Mahalla el-Kubra wa Fondouk ej-Jedid.

I am Egyptian. I am Tunisian. I am Swiss.

2011: two revolutions shake the grounds of the political arab world. Tunisia  and Egypt force dictators to step down. I am fully excited but only half surprised: Arabs have always had the most free minds, and dictatorship was only an artificial trick of history that could not hold for long. And me, forced to look at my countries through screens: computer screen, TV screen, mobile phone screen. It hurts to be so far, but it feels good to be so proud.

I start this blog at the moment where these historical events take place, and I will be certainly talking about it sometimes or most or the time, but the politics are not the purpose here. I think I just want to talk of Masr wa Touness; what are the exact nature and intensity of the feelings the ‘migrant children’ have for their homeland and their rootland.