How Egyptians see the Gaza crisis

I was invited to speak at the memorial service for my colleague and friend, Professor Doris Enright-Clark Shoukri, at the American University in Cairo. It was to be held at the downtown Cairo campus, overlooking Tahrir Square. Doris had worked as a professor of English literature at the university from 1955 to 2017. The same age as the Queen, she too had the aura of a fixed point in the firmament. I live in a new suburb 15 miles west of Tahrir Square. Like Cairo’s other new suburbs, it developed in the Mubarak years without plans for properly connecting it to the overcrowded capital its wealthy citizens sought to escape. But the current President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has been energetically advancing public works projects. The highway has been widened and will soon link up with other roads and bridges. Images of progress appear on campaign posters along the sides of the road.