Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins are both affiliated with the Arab Barometer, an American pollster and research institution dedicated to the study and dissemination in the English language of the economic and cultural trends in the Arab World.
Their latest publication is an article they cowrote under
the title: “Why Democracy Stalled in the Middle East,” and the subtitle:
“Economic Despair and the Triumph of the China Model.” It was published in the
Foreign Affairs edition of March/April 2022.
By all accounts, this article is one of the most accurate
and most comprehensive I have seen on the Arab World, and I would not change a
thing in it. But I would like to make a few comments to alert all those who
write on this subject, of something they can do to help their readers
understand something crucial — if not about the Arab World in its entirety, at least — about
Egypt, which alone makes up a third of the Arab World anyway.
What I wish to talk about are two subjects: (1) The
so-called bread riots of 1977 that took place in Egypt, and (2) the difference
between the two Arabic words “satre” and “Karamah,” and what they signal about
the socio-economic situations motivating the Egyptian people.
It was unfortunate that the first thing the American
media did was label “bread riot” the incident that occurred in Egypt in the
year 1977. In fact, the discontent expressed on that day was not about the
proposed increase in the price of bread, it was that the increase was mandated
by the World Bank and the IMF, and that President Sadat implemented that
“foreign directive” without telling the Egyptian people about it beforehand.
Now, 45 years later, pundits are speculating that bread
riots may take place in Egypt once again in response to the Ukraine War that is
raising the price of wheat. These pundits are basing their judgment on false
information that was disseminated long ago, and on their inability to grasp the
evidence to the contrary that was there for all to see when in 2016, the IMF
proposed increases in the price of bread and other staples in exchange for the
12 billion dollars in loans that Egypt was seeking.
What happened that year, was that President Sisi told the
people what he was going to do before doing it, and nobody rioted. Why? Because
the so-called riots of an earlier time were not about the rise in the price of
bread; it was about the President taking orders from someone outside the
country, and imposing those orders on the people without notifying or
consulting with them first. When Sisi did what Sadat had failed to do, the
people took the price increases in their stride. This explanation should settle
that point.
Now, to the meaning of the two words “satre” and “karamah”
and what they say about the Egyptian character. The literal translation of the
word satre is “hide,” but it is used only in a limited and special circumstances.
Let me give you an example: A guy bumps into an old friend and says, the last
time we met you were desperately looking for a job. How have you been doing
since? And the friend says, “mastourah” which translate as “it is hidden” in
the sense that it is below something or covered by it.
But what is it that’s hidden? What’s hidden is destitution.
It means that the guy found a job, and he is doing well enough now to have
avoided destitution. The irony here is that the two cultures, Arabic and
English, use the same idiom but express it in opposite ways. For example, to
say in English that his head is below water (hidden) means that he is in
financial trouble. To mean that he is doing well financially, you say that his
head is above water. The reversal is due to the fact that one seeks to hide
destitution whereas the other seeks to reveal the head.
Now to the word ‘karamah.’ Translated literally, it means
dignity. So, what’s the difference between saying that someone (a male) is
mastour or that he is karim? Incidentally, if the subject is a female, the two adjectives
become mastourah and karimah.
To answer the question, someone is mastour when he is
avoiding destitution. That is, he is poor but not destitute. It
is said that he is karim if he’s doing well enough to pay for the prevailing
amenities of life, such as living at the middle class level. If he is doing
even better than that, he is “mabsout” which translates literally into “he is
happy” —
the implication being that he has enough money to buy happiness.
Getting back to the Jamal and Robbins article, what do we
see in it when we look through the lens of those definitions?
Well, the thing we notice from reading the article, is
that in the realm of economics, the two most important things on the mind of the
Egyptians, are having a job and living in an environment of price stability. When
guaranteed the minimum living conditions, they make up for the rest by raising
a happy family that fills their lives with joy. To achieve this, they want
their government to be free of foreign influence, and that they dedicate their
utmost effort to the betterment of their people’s lot.
This makes it so that voting for politicians who promise
much and deliver little, is an absurd proposition. The people think and will
say: Let the politicians sort it out among themselves, and choose who will be
in charge of what for the coming period.
As to the country’s external relations, what works for
the Egyptian population, is what the late President Nasser once said: We
befriend those who befriend us, and we antagonize those who antagonize us. The
people Egypt will add: In our relations with the big powers, we live the
principles of non-alignment, which is to maintain god relations with everyone
till someone turns abusive, at which time we distance ourselves from them.