An Algebra of Bread, Freedom and Social Justice

“An Algebra of Bread, Freedom and Social Justice” by Hugo van der
Merwe, age 22
Meeting a young Egyptian while visiting the country an American teenager is confronted
by the startling similarities between himself and the university-student cum bookbinder
and how a lack of civil rights in the region have produced great inequity between the two.
A lack of freedoms have given rise to a frustrated, un(der)-employed youth that fueled the
Arab Spring and will bring much more change to the region.
I met Sayed on my second day in Aswan. It was the middle of February 2011 and
Egyptians were still dazed in the aftermath of Tahrir Square and by the arrival of the
Revolution of the 25th of January. A young and very hip Cairo-born university graduate,
Sayed was struggling to find a job in his field and was instead working part-time as a
book-binder. I suspect that it was Sayed’s curiosity that compelled him to greet me as I
wandered past his street-side shop.
After recognizing my accent he asked me what it was like living in the bright world of
Obama and Hollywood, and I in turn asked him what it was like living in this
incomprehensible world brimming with Days of Revolt, Fridays of Anger and a
Revolution that had barely been named. We matched each other in curiosity and spent the
remainder of my time in Egypt swapping knowledge; it is one of the best bargains I have
ever made.
It began with a description of the state of Egypt before people took to the streets: woeful
levels youth un(or under)employment, a self-serving, corrupt and bloated bureaucracy, a
police force that doled out brutal torture as often as tickets and, finally, a tyrannical
pharaoh who refused to let his people go. Over the following weeks he told me his own
story, but, he also decoded the undertones of an uprising whose anthem was surprisingly
clear: “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice!”
Sayed invoked an image of a people, particularly a youth, whose trust had been
completely betrayed. With their patience exhausted desperate young people were
prepared to drag their dream of a better Egypt, and a better world, kicking and screaming
into the streets. They wanted the government transformed from an autocratic, family-run
business into the natural extension of the people; an extension that would serve to realize
the whole of Egypt’s aspirations.
As Sayed’s account of the unfinished revolution, along with the precious dreams he
harbored for a free Egypt, progressed there grew within me the desire to understand the
origins of my own freedoms. Sayed made me want to trace the genealogy of those Civil
Rights that I had, up until that point in my life, so ignorantly enjoyed. What this history
lesson revealed was a myriad of individuals who had each taken up the struggle, within
the specific cultural context of their eras, to rectify what they saw as political, religious or
social systems that were withholding the natural birthright of mankind: freedom.
From the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther to the renewal of the American
political experiment by Martin Luther King Jr., from Mill’s ode on liberty to Locke’s
determination to imagine a “government with the consent of the governed;” what I found
was that, at every stage, my tradition had been enriched by those contrarians who risked
bringing unheard and potentially blasphemous ideas into the public sphere.
The diversity of this cacophony of voices made it easy for me to overlook the harmony of
their vision: a world that is more just, more true and more filled with the necessary
opportunities that each human being requires to lead a life without fear; a life of
individual and collective dignity.
If the last three years have shown me anything it is that the defiant movement of mankind
towards freedom is not the exclusive property of my own culture. The Arab Spring,
despite its many still unresolved features, is an expression of humanity’s finest quality:
the inviolable dignity that guides us, no matter our culture, to demand for ourselves and
our families Bread, Freedom and Social Justice.
On the whole, I have seen Civil Rights in the Middle-East presented as either a sinister
variation of the old pattern of colonialism and cultural imperialism or as a pipe-dream
maintained as feasible only by clueless idealists. I have come to firmly believe that this is
not and cannot be the case. In holding either of these views we make the error of not only
implicitly characterizing freedom as a Western value but, what’s more, we also risk
trivializing the martyrs of the Arab Spring, the many Khaled Saids and Muhammad
Bouazzizis. In engaging in either of these alternatives we actively participate in silencing
the anthems of Tahrir, Tunisia and beyond.
Civil Rights have to be understood as a project that is universal and not particular. They
are an attempt to legally codify the work-in-progress that is embodied by our collective
efforts to abolish fear from our respective societies. The Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan
Pamuk writes convincingly about the failings on all sides of this equation; and, about the
empathetic restraint that he believes is required for the exchange to be successful. He also
reveals a possible solution: to investigate, with compassion and sensitivity, those forces
that wish to centrifugally drive mankind apart, both East and West, by compelling us seek
shelter in fear or contempt. He describes those outside the western world as being
harassed by “the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing” as well
as “the collective humiliations” of the past, all of which, he says, “lead them to commit
stupidities”.
But, this is not the full story, he proceeds to forcefully indict the Western world for
“taking an excessive pride their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance,
the Enlightenment, and Modernism” which, he explains, results in succumbing “to a selfsatisfaction that is almost as stupid.” Pamuk has been instrumental in helping to form my
belief that fear and pride (which is invariably connected to contempt) are lethal to
dialogue.
In light of this, I think it fair to say that the political and social regeneration of the
Middle-East, through the enactment of Civil Rights, will only be sustainable if these new
values are embedded in the already present cultural resources of the area. Only if
partnership and trust are the driving motivation behind efforts to support civil rights and
only if the temptation to give in to self-satisfaction is resisted do I think there is a future
awaiting us that is free and unafraid. I have found our inability to more fully empower
existing, local actors in their struggle to authentically reform their own societies to be
profoundly detrimental to the relationship.
However, I do not endorse a reticence in acting against systematic and normalized
violations of human rights such as the kinds experienced by specific groups living in the
Middle-East. Whether it be female genital mutilation or laws mandating capital
punishment for apostates, there exist indisputably pressing human rights concerns that
demand political action alongside moral clarity. But, the struggle against these wrongs
can only be carried out by working within the cultural contexts in which they are located.
For these practices to stop there has to be an internal redirection of the same exact social
forces that produced them in the first place. Self-correction is the only lasting solution,
and although it can be encouraged from the outside, it cannot originate there. The Arab
Spring has made it impossible for me to deny that the war against fear is being waged on
all fronts and that the sanctity of individual rights is a value that grows equally well in
every soil.
It was one of my last nights in Aswan that Sayed taught me Algebra. Late in the evening
he knocked on the door of my hostel and told me to follow him. The taxi did not take us
far until we disembarked in front of the two towering yet slender minarets of El-Tabia
Mosque. I slipped off my sandals, as he instructed, and we passed into the interior of the
Mosque. We fell into the heart of an atom: a geometric explosion of lines and unfolding
angular shapes curled up the domed walls. As we looked up at the symmetries and
calligraphy our conversation took a turn from the usual talk of the political troubles
buffeting Egypt to more personal considerations.
Our discussion found its way to Sayed proudly listing the historic contributions that the
Arab world had made to science, architecture, art and, finally, mathematics. Algebra,
Sayed explained, was a Latinized corruption of the Arabic word al-jebre which had
originally meant something along the lines of “restoration”, “completion” or “the reunion
of broken parts.” As the Middle-East continues along its own long walk to freedom I
believe that Sayed and the descendants of those who gave to the world an Algebra of
numbers will be able to construct for themselves an Algebra of Bread, Freedom, and
Social Justice. I am confident that the future will bring a reunion of broken parts.
Locke, John, and John Locke. The Second Treatise of Government ; And, A Letter
concerning Toleration. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002. Print.
Pamuk, Orhan. "Nobel Lecture."Http://www.nobelprize.org/. Nobel Foundation, 7 Dec.
2006. Web. 14 Dec. 2013.