Cairo at night as seen from the Cairo Tower on al-Gazirah, an island in the Nile River, Photo: (cc) flickr user Andrew Griffith

“But we don’t hear anything about your country anymore. We thought everything’s alright and that your demands were met once Mubarak was gone. The situation has gone back to normal. Right,” asked the German tour guide after he discovered I’m Egyptian while he was giving us a night tour in the city of Osnabrueck.

I believe that not only he and his fellow Germans, but people from other countries and nationalities as well, share this perspective.  I have to admit that I’ve been hearing such comments for at least two months now,  which came as no surprise.

So I decided to clarify the situation for my tour guide – as much as I could and my German skills would allow – and gave him the latest updates on the current  situation in Egypt – what we’ve achieved, what we’re still demanding and so on. Of course I don’t blame him. Frankly speaking, the world’s concerns at the moment have changed. Just look at the media attention which has been divided between either the Japan crisis or the Libyan war. If there is any time left it usually goes to Yemen, Syria or the financial dilemma in Portugal. Of course, I don’t underestimate these topics, as they’re all relatively equal. Libya and Syria are neighboring countries, and the unrest which is happening now will definitely affect all our countries on a large scale (African and European equally). Day after day we hear about the immigrants who tried to enter Europe through Italy illegally, and this will not stop as the situation escalates, leading to complications which no one will be able to resolve. On the other hand, there is the Japanese crisis which will definitely affect the global climate and consequently all of us. So all of these topics are important.

However, I have to admit that as I’ve been following the newspapers, the Facebook and Twitter accounts of friends and social media activists, as well as the TV or even YouTube, I couldn’t help but ask myself…Why don’t we hear any more news about the post-revolution state and development progress in Tunisia? Or for that matter about Iraq or the Palestinian conflict?

Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, a family in the Egyptian port city of Rosetta has lived in ruins, as their house was partially destroyed in fighting between demonstrators and the security forces. Photo: © Picture Alliance

My point of view is that revolution is like giving birth to a child…one can’t expect that this child will be able to live on his own after nine months. This child needs support and care in the most critical time of his entire life. And that’s how I see our revolution. And this turning point is exactly what we as Egyptians and those in other Middle East countries who succeeded in toppling their dictators are going through right now. We’re faced by the challenges and problems of what these dark systems left for us after decades of tyranny and autocratic rule: poverty, human rights violations, gender inequality, nationalism, an education crisis, democracy famine and above all…WE ARE STILL BEING RULED BY THE MILITARY!!!

In order to solve such problems, we’ll need not only good intentions but also help and support from the international community. I salute the German government for offering Egypt advice on disbanding the secret police. German experts offered their professional help and expertise on how to dismantle the long-feared spying agency, the National Security Agency. Such efforts and more are exactly what we need the international community to be involved in, initiatives which can help us overcome our post-revolution problems.

Before the international community forgets about us and we get lost amidst the media chaos – and I must emphasize that thus far we’ve only achieved 3 out of 10 main demands which this revolution was for – the revolution is not yet over. We are still struggling for our rights and trying to achieve our demands.