"Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is"
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"Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is" carries the poet’s favorite weapon: a sweeping claim that sounds like comfort but quietly rearranges the moral map. Tahar Ben Jelloun isn’t tallying tragedies like a statistician; he’s invoking a national biography, the kind that turns a country into a protagonist with scars that explain its present. The line works because it compresses centuries of conquest, colonial intrusion, postcolonial governance, and economic strain into one elastic word: "ordeals". It’s vague on purpose. Vague language lets pain stand in for a whole political argument without naming villains, policy failures, or complicity.
The specific intent feels twofold: to dignify endurance and to demand recognition. "More than the other countries" is not merely comparative; it’s competitive, staking Egypt’s claim to exceptionalism. That’s the subtext: if suffering has been the ticket of admission to legitimacy, Egypt has paid in full. It’s an emotional appeal dressed as historical observation.
Context matters because Ben Jelloun writes from within the postcolonial Francophone tradition, where nations are often read as texts and history as a palimpsest of domination and self-making. Egypt, in particular, occupies an outsized symbolic place in Arab and African imaginaries: ancient grandeur, modern upheaval, and constant geopolitical projection by outsiders. The line gently flatters that symbolic weight while also hinting at fatigue: a country repeatedly forced to "get where it is" by forces not entirely of its choosing. The poetry is in the implied question it refuses to ask outright: after so much ordeal, why is arrival still framed as merely "where it is"?
The specific intent feels twofold: to dignify endurance and to demand recognition. "More than the other countries" is not merely comparative; it’s competitive, staking Egypt’s claim to exceptionalism. That’s the subtext: if suffering has been the ticket of admission to legitimacy, Egypt has paid in full. It’s an emotional appeal dressed as historical observation.
Context matters because Ben Jelloun writes from within the postcolonial Francophone tradition, where nations are often read as texts and history as a palimpsest of domination and self-making. Egypt, in particular, occupies an outsized symbolic place in Arab and African imaginaries: ancient grandeur, modern upheaval, and constant geopolitical projection by outsiders. The line gently flatters that symbolic weight while also hinting at fatigue: a country repeatedly forced to "get where it is" by forces not entirely of its choosing. The poetry is in the implied question it refuses to ask outright: after so much ordeal, why is arrival still framed as merely "where it is"?
Quote Details
| Topic | Tough Times |
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