With the whole Country boiling over the Egypt-Algeria match in Sudan, a lot of seemingly patriotic statements have been made by public figures, as well as the public itself.
And it has struck me many times, that there's a chance many of those people may be confusing patriotism with arrogance, intolerance, or the simple thirst for vengeance.
And I've seen it in many different shapes. Some people are calling their anger patriotism and glorifying it, others are using the anger of others to make themselves popular by playing up the patriotic tone, while some people are just excited at all the energy on the media.
Some people are using the energy in the masses to affirm their Egyptian identity, and some are very upset that the Egyptian identity is being celebrated over the Islamic or Arabic one, and others are looking at all the above and hating it, because all they see is the violence and chaos resulting from it.
So to set myself straight, I wanted to try and define what being an Egyptian means to me, at the huge risk of getting it all wrong!
See, I will probably get it wrong, because as a friend told me many years ago, I doubt anybody can accurately define patriotism, least of all someone with my modest education on the subject.
But perhaps getting it somewhat wrong is a step forward from what is happening now, which is people confusing it with all sorts of other things, ruining it for the rest of us.
So here we go:
Patriotism is a heart-felt belonging to... something,
let's say it is -for simplicity, not accuracy- a place.
Through that sense of belonging, patriots feel they can relate to their "people", this does something very important, it connects people, based on only one similarity, regardless of all their differences.
That "creates" a nation, it ties people together with a bond, and allows them to gather around a common flag, and pursue similar goals.
And trust me, that is a wonderful feeling, to belong.
To have a bigger family to which you can relate, and with whom you can dream similar dreams, and talk in the same comfortable tongue about the same comfortable things, and cooperate to achieve the same goals.
It is a power and a privilege, and it could be intimate beyond all words, beautiful beyond all pictures, and valuable beyond all treasures.
Now, since we came to mention treasures, then naturally we must speak of thieves, con-men, beggars and the police!
And we'll get to that in the next post.
