A supporter of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi distributes national flags, Cairo, June 2016. Amr Nabil / Press Association. All rights reserved. I recently encountered a couple of situations that made me question how patriotic I am. I grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and lived there until I was nineteen years old. My childhood was typically upper-middle class; private schools, private sporting clubs as well as private summer rentals were the norm.
Through my encounters with working class Egyptians (shopkeepers, drivers, cleaners, workers), I have always felt that there is a clear divide between the wealthy and the poor - who are the majority of the Egyptian population. This divide, although not the topic of this piece, is a strong reason why I have mixed feelings about how patriotic I am or can claim to be. It affects how strongly I identify myself as an Egyptian and in turn the strength of my patriotism.
After living abroad for five years, and with all the developments happening in Egypt in recent times, I found myself asking my mother, who still lives in Alexandria, how she still has this strong sense of patriotism after all that she has seen. I asked her what the country or government had done for her in order to be this patriotic.
