If you were a graduate of “Martyr Abdul Munim Riad School,” one of several facilities and public places commemorating the martyrs of the War of Attrition, you might ponder the differences in being a martyr today and yesterday.  If you were the brother of a martyr from Tahrir Square, the matter could be turned into an existential issue occupying a considerable space of your time and interest.

If you were a graduate of “Martyr Abdul Munim Riad School,” one of several facilities and public places commemorating the martyrs of the War of Attrition, you might ponder the differences in being a martyr today and yesterday.  If you were the brother of a martyr from Tahrir Square, the matter could be turned into an existential issue occupying a considerable space of your time and interest.

Taleb Abdulmuti Ahmed Rajab learned of this predicament when he tried to name the Islamic seminary in his village, Sanafen, after his martyred brother who had graduated from the seminary. Rajab’s request was rejected by officials who are, he says, a product of the revolution.

A question of honor

This is how some see the gap between the treatement of martyrs by the state in different periods of time. While martyrs’ families have succeeded, after fierce clashes, which paradoxically resulted in further political killings, to obligate the state to disburse financial compensations, moral appreciation, Rajab says, is still largely absent. Rajab believes that moral honoring is far more important than the financial honoring of US $16,000 his family received from the state.

“So far, no monument carrying the names and photos of the martyrs has been placed in  Tahrir Square in a civilized manner that expresses a revolution. Compare this to the martyrs of wars,” Rajab added.

Bahr el-Baqar: Between two martyrs

What is true for Rajab applies more to Abdelmaqsoud Hamid. The family of this 60 year-old man stands between two bloody periods that formed Egypt’s modern history. Hamid is the uncle of martyr Mohammed Abdulrahman who was killed in Tahrir Square during the January revolution. He is also a member of the family of child martyr Tariq Hassan, who was killed in 1970 during the War of Attrition, when Israeli warplanes carried out an air raid on a primary school in the village of Bahr el-Baqar (Sharqiyya, the Nile Delta), claiming more than forty children.

According to Hamid, the state pays more attention to the martyrs of its wars and political crises. The late President Sadat personally visited Hamid’s family to offer condolences, and the school martyrs’ names were put on an obelisk at the entrance to the village, let alone perpetuating the aggression in curricula and other historical narratives of the period.

However, in a scene contrary to the statements made by Hamid, it seems that even the memory of Bahr el-Baqar martyrs did not escape the frivolous play of fate. For unknown reasons, the exhibits of the event – unexploded bombs and martyrs’ clothes – disappeared from Orabi Museum in the governorate.

According to statements of Amjad Maher, an official in the museum, the former governor of Sharqiyya, Yahya Abdulmajid, directly ordered the delivery of exhibits of Bahr el-Baqar to a group of the governorate headquarters employees. They were loaded into a tractor and “we do not know where they went.”