Eqypt's Sun, Reborn



This morning I awoke to the news that Egypt was continuing to celebrate freedom in this new day. I heard an interview with one of the great heroes of this liberation movement, Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who helped organize the peaceful protests online--on his anonymous Facebook page, named We Are All Khaled Said in remembrance of a man who was killed while protesting in June. 



I found this photo of Ghonim's January 27th arrest in today's Huffington Post. He didn't emerge from prison--where he was blindfolded and kept in solitary confinement--until Monday, Feb. 7. What a joy it must have been to discover that his peaceful revolution was still alive.

Today I wore the second pair of scarab earrings that I made on January 28th when this protest movement was still so fragile. I thought about saving them for Egypt's election day, but decided to have faith that this freedom movement will continue to grow.

Tonight on the news I watched crowds of people cleaning Cairo's Tahrir Square, and thought again of the amazing metaphor of the scarab, the dung beetle that patiently rolls balls of waste into its burrow, then lays eggs in the dung. The larvae hatch, feed on the dung, and young beetles emerge, as if magic. The ancient Egyptians saw the rising of the sun each day as part of this same magical cycle, and said that Khepera the scarab god, was rolling the sun across the heavens.

I think that this pair looks like newly emerged beetles, still sandy from life under the desert floor.

They have much work to do before their shells will shine in the sunlight.

But how much they accomplished while hidden underground, working quietly to prepare for this moment when they would emerge to undertake their real work.

Perhaps on election day, I will remake these brighter beads into a new pair.

I hope that Egypt has many Wael Ghonims who are ready to help Egypt's sun to rise each day.