The Project!

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From now on, for the next seven weeks, the writing will come from a suburb of Boston, USA, known as 'Waltham', where Brandeis University, where I study, is located.

Travel no longer means disconnection; all the tools of the era - the computer in front, the mobile phone on the ear, and the watch on the wrist - are all tuned to the news of the homeland, the Arab world, and the ongoing wars.

Thousands of miles away, the voice of Professor Mahmoud Al-Tamimi comes to request a contribution to the program 'In Maspero' regarding the most complex and ongoing issues.

No one has questioned an easy and straightforward issue; in our region, thank God, that is not known, and there are always levels of analysis that do not fall below the global, international, regional, and local systems, where the reflections on beloved Egypt are concerned.

Global television stations are flowing in terms of broadcasting and are prominent on YouTube, and more than what I have heard on Arab channels, the talk was about the "project" that is taking place in the Middle East and making it "new."

In our generation, the discussion about the Middle East was a kind of deviation from what we all cherished, which was the Arab world, where Arabism, the Arabic language, and shared history resided.

Now, the Middle East has become a single political and geopolitical unit, contested by many projects that are sometimes cooperative, competitive, and often conflictual with weapons and money.

In previous generations, the word "project" meant something that had an impact on many people, and sometimes on many countries. Some of these projects took place in Egypt, such as the digging of the Suez Canal that connected seas and continents; and the High Aswan Dam, which is unique in its engineering and critical in its reality due to the war that followed its decision, the tripartite aggression; and abroad, major projects like the Panama Canal that connected two oceans: the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The Great Chinese Dam on the Yangtze River, which passes through three gorges and rivers; and tunnels like the Channel Tunnel that connected France and Britain, and similar projects occurred in Japan to connect islands, and in Egypt beneath the Suez Canal to link the Nile Valley and Sinai.