Revolts are more than just a call to restore dignity

Cairo: The revolts shaking North Africa and the Middle East are about many things, but the most potent is a yearning for respect after decades of repression and promises betrayed.

The Arab world had denied them that for too long. Then suddenly the known order cracked and unrest spread from Tunis to Cairo to the bloody streets of Tripoli. "Dignity became what they were looking for," says Randa Habib, a Jordanian writer. "This was the essence of the rage."

What comes next is unclear, but the leaders who eventually emerge will be answerable to emboldened voices and restored pride.

They felt this once in the 1950s, when Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser offered the vision of pan-Arabism. It failed, and the Arab spirit since then has frayed like a neglected tapestry under monarchies and autocracies.

Once bonded by disillusionment and frustration, Arabs share courage and a belief in the possible.

There will be failures and disappointments in coming months. Poverty will cling and political freedoms will be manipulated as the euphoria of the moment is likely to slip into the tedious burden of incremental change. But, for now, every Arab is a brother, a sister.

Brotherhood

Egyptian doctors truck medical supplies across the border to the wounded in Libya. Workers in Tunisia send encouragement to protesters in Jordan. "I look at the television and see what is happening in Egypt and in Tunisia and Libya, and I think, they are my brothers," says Saeed Ahmad, a bandage over his nose where he was hit by a rock during protests in Yemen.

"I have never met them, but we are brothers. We are all Arabs. We have a long history, and now we are standing up together and saying, ‘We are free people.'"

Many Arabs suggest that what is happening is epochal, a new beginning for an Islamic world that once — from the 8th to the 13th centuries — was a paragon in science and the arts.

That "golden age" was followed by generations of colonialism, inept and corrupt rulers, political alliances bound to oil and resources, the creation of Israel and the rise of terrorist organisations.

"We Arabs used to be at the centre of the culture. We invented mathematics. We were the scholars, the scientists. The world turned to Arabia for its books," says Anwar Hamady, a protester in Yemen. "And now, look at us. We are the poorest people in the world, backwards and tribal and illiterate. Why? Because we have let ourselves be led around like dogs by leaders, by thieves. Now, with our revolutions in Egypt, and Libya and Tunisia, and in Yemen, we are saying no. We are saying we are dignified. We are proud."