Close to Quitting

Or at least I was. Part of my experience of blogging was to accentuate differences to provoke thought and create discussion, however the result turned out to be different from what I expected, instead making me stand out as kind of odd, and feel even less comfortable or safe doing it. Today we don't have thought police in the form of threatening government agencies, although their omnipresence is ever looming, but in the form of editors who run a controlled herd mentality of thought. The state run press allows mostly praise for government policy whose decisions naturally aren't always right, and the opposition press seems to follow rules of a frightening parallel world (which might as well be added to Sam's APU) where Reform = War, and National Honour = Foreign People's Issues over their own (borrowing the equations' format from 1984 of course).

Oppressed in the middle are liberal voices which seem to be fought by both sides and deliberately given no real venues of expression of their own, and instead they are left in an Orwellian limbo world where they are wondering: "Am I the only one, or are there others who are thinking what I am thinking?", and really this is what all the liberal Arab bloggers describe as they enter the blogosphere.

And maybe things aren't really this bad, people of the opposition (the crazy ones, not the sane) do seem to have the maximum freedom of expression, but I wouldn't really know because I personally don't know my boundaries and rights as a citizen. So in a way we are very free now, often to the degree of chaos, but still stigmatized from a culture of fear that the country lived throughout the 50s and 60s which is over now, thank God, but in undefined terms under these emergency laws which offer no guarantees to make us feel safe enough when it comes to talking politics.

So I was glad to find this blogosphere, and joined it as a welcome way to circumvent these editorial thought police and communicate and discuss issues with similar-minded Egyptians, but the personalized nature of the blog as well as some of the egos of my fellow bloggers, it seems, won't allow this to happen. I mean I'm unfortunately familiar with Cairene egos in real life, but I didn't imagine them to be such divas on the internet as well (not you Sam, your ego is a good one :-) And Freedom, thanks for warmly welcoming me to the blogosphere). It's horrible to see the way Egyptians treat each other abroad, and it's quite pathetic if we can't even get along on the internet.

Another major reason I should quit is that I find blogging to be too time consuming. I won't say I have more important things to do, because I really don't (I'm a boring person). But I guess I owe it to myself to try to use some of the time I spend here in getting on with other things in my life.

So anyway, I'm not quitting yet, and my decision isn't yet final. I still have a few more issues to blog about here and there, but I'm just sharing with you why I feel I should do so. As for the forgers of our history, they gave me the fuel to stay on the scene for a little while longer for now.

(p.s. : Check out the cute threat I received from Mrs. Iman Badawy "Yankees stay in Iraq and get killed." These are the rabid and insane types which are cynically given a free hand in the press over the liberals by our government.)