If we're living in Marshall Mcluhan's global village, the world's high street is in Egypt this morning, and Tahrir Square, like Tiananmen Square before it, replaces Central Park, Hyde Park and Woodford Square in the contemplation of the villagers: What will happen after prayers today? Will the crowds gather again in Woodford/Tahrir/Tiananmen Square? Will the army turn on them, if they do? It was a week ago, after afternoon prayers, that the protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, protests that must lead either to his immediate downfall or the probably violent suppression of dissent and his continuance in office. The bloody attack on peaceful protesters by pro-Mubarak thugs -watched passively and allowed to go on for several hours by the army-on Wednesday suggests Mubarak is determined to stay on and his statement that he will go peacefully in September, after a necessary period of power transition, is yet another lie intended to benefit only himself and his cronies. To allow Mubarak to remain until September, or any future date at all, is to allow him to stay as long as he himself dictates, so to speak. Like his Tunisian and Haitian predecessors, the only reason he will ever go is because he cannot control the massive protests against him, cannot clear the streets long enough for the intimidation process to begin to work against the citizens in their own minds.
What happens after prayers this afternoon, then, could well be pivotal. If you can't make love on empty belly, as Sparrow sang, it's even more difficult to make protest on the same foundation or lack thereof, and, for a week now, people have been unable to go about important mundane matters. Parents of small children have been reaffirming their decision to stand for a crucial principle-but how long can any principle remain crucial when your babies are crying for the food you have to buy and take home and prepare for them? So there remains, theoretically, the possibility of a fizzle out, of people leaving mosque today, shrugging their shoulders and saying, "We gave it a good shot," and heading home or to work or the market or anywhere other than the square. The biggest, wildest Carnival fete that has raged for hours will, at some point, lose its energy; or rather, lose the repeatedly unconsciously made continuing individual commitments to reenergise the whole; and then the party massive splinters; and then the fete is over; and where, moments before, you had the best fete you ever went to, you now have a bunch of yawning, dead-out people walking listlessly to the car park and wondering how they will get up for work. The massive combined force that generated so much excitement just moments before has vanished into a myriad of tiny individual concerns.
Mubarak's best hope is to hang on until that moment arrives and what he must hope is a precarious, spontaneous phenomenon simply evaporates. Every day he holds on, up to a point, makes it more likely he will be able to hold on. But the people of Egypt, under the Mubarak yoke for a full anthropological generation, sense-and the tweets they send out reveal-that, if they fail to seize this day, they may never get another one. Something great may happen today; and the world watches closely. If today's events lead to the sight of Hosni Mubarak boarding a plane to Paris this weekend or early next week, though-and everyone in the world, apart from Mubarak and those who derive their lucre from him wants to see him gone-it may not necessarily turn out to be a good thing. When things are going well, the realist is labelled a pessimist. The world wants to see Mubarak gone but the reality is he may easily be replaced by something worse. The world rejoiced when the Shah of Iran was toppled and there were many who were pleased Saddam Hussein was removed-but what replaced them has proved far worse. At least, under the Shah, you could have got a drink in Teheran and your daughter could have got a university degree; at least, under Saddam Hussein, it was only grown-ups who were being murdered, not children being bombed, and the oldest university in the world was not looted for sale on eBay.
Several people have pointed out there are differences between Egypt and Iran. The difference between Shiite and Sunni, eg, seems important to Sunnis, spokesmen for whom aver that Egyptians simply will not accept a Muslim theocracy; and there is no towering figure in Egypt equivalent to the Ayatollah Khomeni, that madman who ordered the murder of a writer without reading his book. For the global villager who would see the village itself guided by western notions of reason and personal liberty, the quite obvious similarities between Sunni and Shiite are far more worrying than any alleged differences. It is an old adage of western politics that, in the Middle East, you have a choice between secular dictatorship and democratic theocracy. It is no comfort to be told there is, at the moment, no religious madman prepared to murder people for his interpretation of what God wants. One will certainly emerge; and the country that gave the world the Muslim Brotherhood will rally around him; and, in a short time, people may be pining for the good old days of Hosni. Egypt's real hope lies, today and in the future, with her women, who have been involved in the protests from the start-a real difference between Iran and Egypt that may prove crucial. Whatever happens today in Tahrir Square, the world must watch Egyptian women closely; for it may not be long before the world is told it is not allowed to look at an Egyptian woman, unless she is in full hijab; and that an Egyptian woman is not allowed to look directly at a man or obliquely at a career.
BC Pires is obviously a western Christian pessimist. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com