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.

Egyptian-US engineer Mohamed Radwan (c) speaks to the media after he and his parents met with Egypt's Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby in Cairo April 3. Radwan was released April 1 after a week in detention in Syria for filming last week's protests in Damascus with a mobile phone. Radwan had been working in Syria for his father's company. Photo: picture alliance / © dpa.

I had returned home from the doctor’s clinic on Saturday evening fidgeting with anxiety. My surgery was scheduled for the next day, and naturally my mind started contemplating the results. If all goes well I should be alive and in a better condition than I am in now. If not … Well, I didn’t want to dwell on the possibilities.

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.

Caricature drawn by Sara Abd El Azim during the revolution, Photo: Sara Abd El Azim (Twitter @lujee), http://lewjee.blogspot.com

In the run up to the toppling of the then president Mohamed Hosny Mubarak, his parasitic group in power did their utmost to keep him in place. Government-controlled media took up mass propaganda by fabricating stories and advocating the ex-president’s merits.

The loyalists were using a message they thought would make most people quiet down, a message that had proven effective in the past – the president is your father.

It was a clever card to play, addressing the strong emotional bond between Egyptians and their families. A family in Egypt is widely seen as the building block of society, and its well-being is the number one priority to all its members.