Mock coffins of Egyptians who died in clashes with security forces earlier in the month are placed in the street of the Egyptian Parliament and Prime Minister’s office, as some protesters continue a sit-in there and in Tahrir square one day before the run-off in the first round of the parliamentary elections, Cairo, Egypt, 04 December 2011. Photo: picture alliance / © dpa

Egypt’s Tahrir Square a few weekends ago was not full of scenes of jubilation, but rather those of screams, tears, blood and violent clashes between demonstrators and police. More than 1,800 young Egyptians were injured and the violence claimed 42 people across the country according to Egyptian officials.

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.

A young man mourns his brother killed during the uprising against Lybian leader Gadhafi in Benghazi, Libya, March 12, 2011. Photo: (c) picture alliance / abaca

“He should have seen it coming” was a comment I heard from a news anchor about Libyan president tyrant Mommar Gaddafi  after the U.N. voted Thursday, March 18 to approve the resolution “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack” – that is from an attack by their own president. The resolution, sponsored by the United Kingdom, France, Lebanon and the United States, passed with an abstention from Germany.

Egyptians abroad followed events closely, supporting them with solidarity actions. Here, Cairo University teacher Arafa Radvan, a doctoral candidate at Kharkiv's polytechnic institute in Ukraine, holds a homemade Egyptian flag Feb. 4, 2011 in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine; Photo: picture alliance / (c) dpa

On January, 15, 2011 – only one day after the Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced on state television the ouster of FORMER president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and that he had taken control of the country – I received a message from one of my friends. It stated “Tunisia chose change and Egypt chose chips with shrimps”, a joke from a famous snack company’s advertising campaign expressing the state of frustration and cynicism our nation had reached after the dramatic events in Tunisia. The joke shows the humor we Egyptians used to express our real frustration and despair about what our country was going though. Once being a leader in the Middle East, we watched the Tunisian Revolution unfold with mixed feelings of happiness for their freedom, and also deep sadness that we were not the first to breakthrough the silence and indifference.