Photos, words, faces and places that have surfaced during official events in the past few days are reminiscent of other photos, words, faces, and places behind the paradox that summarizes the substantial challenge for Egyptians in restoring and completing their revolution.

Photos, words, faces and places that have surfaced during official events in the past few days are reminiscent of other photos, words, faces, and places behind the paradox that summarizes the substantial challenge for Egyptians in restoring and completing their revolution.

The photo of President Mohamed Morsi attending the Harvest Day celebration in the lands of sugar beet in the city of Borg El Arab, Alexandria Governorate, is reminiscent of the photo of President Hosni Mubarak witnessing the maturation of the first crop of wheat in the Toshka Project. The two photos form the first feature of comparison between two dictators.

The comparison was crude in its details due to the comic insistence on putting the presidency slogan on the official platform where Morsi stood to talk to the audience. The scene details had stunning contradictions; it was a harvest day in a field, so why did they insist on the red carpet and the slogan?

The only justification for that is what Egyptians used to say during the first days of Morsi’s rule: “He deeply imitates a character from the movie ‘Something of Fear,’ especially the scene when the imbecile character said, “By God, I am Atris, I am a hundred Atrises. Why do you not fear.” This character was suffering from a shock caused by the tyranny of the village dictator against the villagers, including the character itself, so he identified with the dictator character and started to imitate him only to be shocked when he discovered that the people were not afraid of him, but of his master.

Thus, if we put the two photos next to each other, we will find that Mubarak, after nearly twenty years in power, acted in Toshka as a seasoned bureaucratic dictator who developed his performance. He listened to tips by his assistants and family, especially his youngest son: “Mr. President! In the field, be free of official protocols and lose the tie. People still remember your previous visit to the site when yellow sands dominated the scene. Today, green is dominant, so be as if in a picnic and at rest after tiredness. Look at the horizon. The people want hope, so show them a face with hope expressions.”

The Minister of Information insisted that the president appear alone, which angered then Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri who considered Toshka his own property, intellectually and administratively, so why would Mubarak appear like a good discoverer of wilds and mines?

Morsi has not yet completed his first year in power, and some people insist on preventing him from doing so, so tips come to him: “You are the president, and people must remember that. We will bring the official slogan and red carpet. Wave your hands a little bit. We will put you in the right scene. Behind you are two levels of wheat fields; green ones that are yet to mature and yellow ones ready to be harvested. Wave your hands, signifying determination and courage, and be cheerful a little bit, a little bit only since laughter kills the heart, and leave the rest to us.”

Finally, the bread

Before he went to the harvest, Morsi wrote on his Twitter page, “I say to every citizen in Egypt, we are on the right track toward achieving the first goal of the revolution— bread— and producing our food with our hands from our land is the real correction of the mistakes we have been experiencing for decades.”

Two days earlier, the Minister of Justice, Advisor Ahmed Suleiman, said that his meeting with Morsi addressed many problems and needs of judges and the developments of Justice Conference. He expected that the president would meet all demands and excluded a collision with financial constraints. “The Lord’s generosity has begun flooding, and we cannot find enough place to store the abundant wheat crop,” he said.

“The Ministry of Justice is fighting corruption and the most important pillar in this fight is not only prosecution but also the moral construction of the individual,” Suleiman stressed.

While covering the harvest celebration, the media talked about how the people of Borg El Arab described wheat achievements promoted by the presidency and the current regime as merely a new swindle: “The quantities are the same, the young graduates and farmers are the same, and no new effort has been exerted by the regime.”

The photos, words, faces and places draw the two scenes: there are common features and structural differences. In the common features, the dictator must appear alone, stepping alone on the red carpet. Differences manifest as follows: The seasoned bureaucrat dictator is easygoing to the extent of boredom. The Toshka Project story is old, dating back to the early 1960s when many studies, programs and development plans researching how to make use of the water of Lake Nasser in cultivating valleys and supplying aquifers in oases, especially the Kharga Oasis and areas located south of the New Valley, were carried out.

Detailed studies continued, soil classification works were done and several options that remained under study were made, culminating in the preparation of the Encyclopedia of Western Desert in 1989 by the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in conjunction with the Desert Research Institute. The four-volumed Encyclopedia contains a lot of information and studies on water and mineral resources, land, tourism, fauna and flora, and population activities since the age of the pharaohs.

However, the dictator remained bureaucrat to the core and waited ten years until personal motives prompted him to appear as a prairie discoverer aspiring for the future as if he had been a man building an extra room for his son to get married.

The metaphysical dictator is hasty and self-confident. He lays not up for himself treasures upon earth but in heaven. He is an authority that literally recites and understands words, which is accused to dictation. Therefore, it considers that the word “bread” – the first word of the slogan of the 2011 revolution – means “bread” literally while it de facto means livelihood. When it says to Egyptians that the wheat crop has increased this year by 30%, it means that doubling the crop takes four years, so be patient. It also says it will only move to implement the rest of the slogan – freedom and social justice – after insuring “bread,” but no one should cheat himself and imagine that it depends on our efforts; no it depends on the “Lord’s generosity and moral construction of the individual.”

Egyptians who rebelled against the seasoned bureaucrat will not be satisfied and patient with the hasty comic metaphysical dictator for long, I think, or at least I hope.