by Ruth Pollard
Middle East Correspondent
The Sydney Morning Herald
Cairo: A tiny woman dressed all in black sits at a crowded communal table in the Cairo neighbourhood of Agouza, her daughter hovering protectively by her side.
Families gather for a mass iftar (breaking fast) in Tahrir square, Waguih earlier this month. Photo: Reuters
It is just after 7pm and she is breaking the Ramadan fast at a Ma’edet Rahman, one of thousands of special tables set up in streets all over Egypt during the holy month, where the poor or even those just passing by can eat together for free.
We give people rice, vegetables and meat, some people come not just for the food but to be together — this is the real Islam, this is not the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mona, who is 60 and does not want her last name published, travels from the outer suburb of Haram every day to sell lemons and bunches of mint on the streets of the capital.
It is tough, dusty work and most days she makes 25-30 Egyptian pounds ($A3.90-$A4.70), just over the $US2 per day on which 40 per cent of her fellow Egyptians survive.
After paying a monthly rent of 300 Egyptian Pounds (A$47), there is little left over for food and other essentials for Mona, a widow, and her three daughters.
Her struggle is, in essence, Egypt’s struggle, yet it is one that the deposed Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government forever failed to grasp.
“I eat here with my daughter so we don’t take Iftar alone,” she says, acknowledging that the last year had been especially tough on finances.
Conscious of the crackling tension around her, Mona won’t be drawn on the downfall of Mohamed Mursi on July 3 — a move his supporters claim was a military coup but his detractors say was the will of the millions of people who took to the streets calling for his removal.
But the volunteer manager of the communal Ramadan table, at which around 70 people eat each night, is more forthcoming.
To give the Government to Muslim Brotherhood was a sure way to ‘destroy’ them. Because no government, religious or secular, could solve the huge economic challenges that Egypt is facing. May be that was the intention?
Whoa … nice point Rafiq saheb. Maybe it was.