Inauguration

On the day Barack Hussein Obama was elected, I walked into a classroom. My students were beaming. My Egyptian students. You have a history, I thought. You have such a rich history. You are ancient Egypt. You are the bearers, the inventors of so much. My students were looking at me. "Are you happy?" asked one. I looked back at them, the current inhabitants of a sham democracy, who know better than me that even they, the elite, don't have a choice, that to make change they will have to go through far more troubling and violent times than you or I when we ticked our ballots. "I hope someday you can experience this feeling, too," I said, wishing I had the power of voice, the power to transform, the power to give them hope.

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