The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

Column: The khawaga's lament

My latest piece is al-Masri al-Youm is up, on the rather self-indulgent topic of being a foreigner in revolutionary Egypt and the anti-cosmopolitian undercurrent in Egyptian politics.

As Al-Masry Al-Youm’s only non-Egyptian regular columnist, I have the painful but necessary task to highlight how foreigners residing in Egypt have lived through this revolution. This is, admittedly, a matter of tertiary importance: Egyptians are in the process of deciding their fate, and, hopefully, taking a leap towards building a real democracy. Nonetheless, one of the indicators of democracy is how governments and the societies they represent treat not only their citizens, but also the aliens among them.

Read the rest here.