CAIRO — A man who sold eggs said the army had waited too long to attack the Islamists. An accountant said the police had stormed the protests with an efficiency he had not seen in years.
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The events in Cairo set off a violent backlash across Egypt.
In the working-class neighborhood of Imbaba on Thursday, a teacher, Mohamed Abdul Hafez, said the hundreds of Islamists who died the day before mattered little to him. “It’s about the security of the country,” Mr. Hafez said.
Egypt seemed more divided than ever after a brutal day of violence here that left hundreds of people dead. Supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, mourned those killed, vowed revenge, planned their next moves. Many other Egyptians, though, directed their ire at the protesters who had camped out in the streets for weeks. For them, what occurred made sense.
“It was necessary,” Akmal William, standing in his auto-detailing shop on Talaat Harb Street, said of the raid by soldiers and police officers. “They had to be strict.”
Witnesses described a disproportionate, ruthless attack. Condemnations came from human rights advocates, a few Egyptian political figures, and from abroad. But many Egyptians viewed things differently, focusing on what they said were continuing threats from Mr. Morsi’s supporters, who were frequently referred to as terrorists. In their view, the army was the only force standing in the Islamists’ way.
Between the parallel realities, others were torn between the claims of the security forces of violent demonstrators who threatened the country — a view parroted by the state news media — and what they heard from Islamist friends about how the battle on the streets had unfolded on Wednesday morning.
In Imbaba, a neighborhood that seems to catch all the nation’s political currents in its congested alleyways, many people regretted the bloodshed. But they asserted that the alternative was worse. The Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Morsi’s political party, was holding back the country with endless sit-ins and protests, many said. And the longer the army waited to act, the weaker Egypt seemed to them.
That conviction only grew stronger amid reports about Islamist violence, including the storming of a government building in Giza early Thursday. Mr. William, a Coptic Christian, was preoccupied by a spate of attacks on churches and Christian homes across the country, a spasm of collective scapegoating by some of Mr. Morsi’s supporters.
“They won’t go easily,” he said, adding that churches “are still being burned.”
Some people seemed to buy the relentless propaganda of the state news media, saying they had come to realize that the Brotherhood was actually the mysterious “third party” blamed by successive Egyptian leaders for all manner of evil deeds. At least one man just seemed anxious to heap praise on the country’s leaders, irrespective of their actions, as if Egypt were still frozen in its authoritarian past.
Others had arrived at their own conclusions, and explained in detail why the government had been forced to act against Mr. Morsi and his supporters, regardless of the consequences.
“I don’t like conspiracy theories,” said Ahmed Mustafa, 37, an accountant who sat in a cafe. “I’m against violence. I gave my vote to Morsi, and he disappointed me. They did things their way, and it was a false way.”
The authorities acted responsibly on Wednesday, he said, moving during daylight, so that “everything was obvious,” rather than under the cover of darkness.
“We delegated them to fight terrorism,” he said of the military. “And the Brotherhood wanted to show themselves as victims.”
Openly, people praised the army, which deposed Mr. Morsi on July 3 and has remained Egypt’s leading power ever since. More quietly, some expressed doubts about the rush to support the military’s assertion of its authority after two and a half years of popular protests aimed at transforming Egypt from an authoritarian government to a democracy.
“I don’t know who is right and who is wrong,” said Hassan Mahmoud, who works in a bed store. “Some say the Brotherhood was shooting. Some say they were being shot.”
Reflecting the confusion of many Egyptians, he added: “We don’t know the truth. And we don’t know where we are heading.”
A woman named Israa, who asked that her last name not be published because of fears of retribution, said that Egyptians had become “brainwashed.”
“This is not us,” she said. “It’s not Egypt at all. We are not happy with death and blood.”
She was not a supporter of Mr. Morsi, who critics said had seemed to grow more feckless by the month. But there was no solution to be found in the violence, and Egypt’s growing comfort with nationalism, she said.
“We have this thing about us, that the Egyptian Army is untouchable,” Israa said.
“So many want Egypt ruled with an iron grip,” she said. “No one cares that leaders might be lying to the people. People are in a coma.”
In an alleyway nearby filled with children, Mohamed el-Mehdi, 30, took his infant son for a stroll before the curfew that Egypt’s leaders imposed after the fighting on Wednesday.
The breakup of the sit-ins had been a surprise, he said. Egyptians were expecting they would be dispersed more peacefully. “We were expecting skirmishes,” he said. “All of a sudden there was gunfire.”
Between the self-interested, unverified claims coming from all sides, “the facts are not clear,” Mr. Mehdi said.
“We want reconciliation, but we can’t reconcile with a group that we’re all calling to be banned,” he said, referring to the Brotherhood. “Most of Egypt is divided. And their differences are playing out in the streets.”
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/world/middleeast/working-class-cairo-neighborhood-tries-to-make-sense-of-a-brutal-day.html?_r=2&
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