"Naima." Understanding Egypt and dictators through a short story

If you want to read it online, well, it is behind a paywall.

Given the turmoil in Egypt, it is a fascinating coincidence that the January 24th issue of the New Yorker should feature a short story that is so much about Egypt, Cairo, politics, women, ...  I bow in appreciation to these writers who so easily are able to draw even moronic readers like me into the situations they present in their stories.

Like a lot of fiction, this one too might be based on the author's real life experiences--how loosely or closely I know not.  A Google search led me to to a powerful and emotional essay by the author, Hisham Matar, who was born in the pre-Gaddafi Libya,.in which he writes about how his father's political activities made them flee to Egypt after quite a few unsuccessful attempts.  And then to make things worse, the Egyptian government let the Libyans kidnap Matar's father and hold him indefinitely without any contact with the family:

What I want is to know what happened to my father. If he is alive, I wish to speak with him and see him. If he has broken the law, he ought to be tried and given a chance to defend himself. And if he is dead, then I want to know how, where and when it happened. I want a date, a detailed account and the location of his body.

And those awful people still run these countries--Gaddafi in Libya and Mubarak, who "inherited" the power thanks to Sadat's assassination.  It is awful that we have tolerated dictators like Mubarak and Gaddafi and so many others for this long.  Matar's observations on Gaddafi could apply to many other dictators too:

Gaddafi is unique among dictators in that he has few constant beliefs. A position which has afforded him an extraordinary instinct for survival.

Matar notes in that same essay:

living without one's country is a kind of daily death, that exile is, in essence, an endless mourning.

Here is to hoping for a quick end to the millions of such daily death.