From Verses to Tragedy: The Story of Basant and the Missing Question of Justice |
During the first half of last month, the primary focus of attention for Egyptians was neither the American Israeli war with Iran nor any other international development. Instead, the central issue dominating public attention was the tragedy of the Egyptian blogger Basant Suleiman, the Alexandrian woman who decided to end her life during a live broadcast. She jumped from the thirteenth floor balcony of a building in the upscale district of Smouha, in an incident that shook public opinion and reopened painful questions about Egypt’s personal status laws, the role of the state and society, social media, and psychological pressures.
Some may ask: why is this article coming weeks after she “asked to leave our world”? The answer is simple. Every time I attempt to write, I am overwhelmed again by the same intense anger that took hold of me the moment I fully grasped what she had been subjected to the causes, the events, and an entire system of practices and behaviors that effectively pushed her toward the decision to commit suicide, and then to carry it out live before millions. A scene that cannot be separated from its social and psychological context.
This was not merely an individual act. In its brutality and public exposure, it became a direct indictment almost an eternal stigma against both the state and society together. A testimony written with her final decision and signed before everyone, as if declaring that the accumulated neglect, complicity, and absence of a real protective system for women in Egypt were the real cause.
What makes this anger persistent is that the core reason behind what happened is still deliberately concealed; neither discussed nor acknowledged, as if there were an unspoken agreement to........