Tag Archives: Egypt

However grim and difficult life these days is, I’d still prefer to be sitting on dry land in lockdown than trying to do a three-point turn on the Suez canal with a 400-metre cargo ship under my control. Wouldn’t you? The grounding of the Ever Given container vessel in the Suez canal has provoked both hilarity and genuine concern.

In 2011, I, like most Egyptians at the time, had little hope that Hosni Mubarak’s regime would ever end. His 30 years in power had been set apart by systematic human rights violations. His pathological concern with his own security had given rise to a vast autocratic and bureaucratic state, with little civil or political freedom.