On
a brisk January afternoon in Cairo, as the Coptic community celebrated
the birth of Christ, demonstrators dressed in black lined the city's
famous, lion-headed Qasr al-Nil bridge, a busy span favoured by young
couples and tourists looking to catch a shot of sunset over the Nile.
Police
officers standing nearby watched the group and the passing traffic
warily, while squads of helmeted riot police arranged themselves at the
bridge exit, waiting for orders. As is often the case in Egypt, the
police outnumbered the protesters.
Six days after a
shrapnel-filled bomb killed 23 worshippers at a New Year's Eve church
service in the coastal city of Alexandria - the deadliest attack on the
country's minority Coptic Christian community in a decade -
demonstrators in Cairo are still taking to the streets to show
solidarity with the victims and anger at the government. But a sense of
fatalism, an inability to hold the government to account or to rectify
the disputes that may be driving sectarian anger, hangs over even these
displays of fellowship.
Holding a sign that read "Muslim +
Christian = Egyptian" and dressed in black from her headscarf to her
abaya, Dalia Salaheldin described her reaction to hearing news of the
bombing as "sadness, grave sadness".
Salaheldin said she and and
other Muslim friends had attended Christmas Eve mass on Thursday night
to show support for the Coptic community.
"I didn't really care
if the people are Muslims or Christians, they're just Egyptians, and for
me, Egypt has always been home, and I want home to be safe," she said.
In
Salaheldin's view, the bombing shouldn't be interpreted as a revelation
that simmering sectarian tensions in Egypt have finally bubbled over.
Though much of the country remains poor and undereducated, Salaheldin
argued, the essential nature of the Egyptian citizen is still one of
peaceful coexistence.
But she, like others, was reluctant to pin the blame for the bombing on anyone.
"Someone
is not happy with this and wants the situation to be divided," she
said. "I am sure that whoever has done this is not really related to
being a Christian or a Muslim".
This article is continued on Al Jazeera HERE .
