The train stormed through Cairo’s Ramses station carrying death across the railway.
It began as a fireball, blackening walls and charring bodies before colliding into a barrier at high speed. An explosion. At least 25 dead, 47 injured (officially).
A surveillance video captured the moment of impact as the blazing locomotive — unmanned —barrelled past unsuspecting men and women, engulfing them in flames; innocent Egyptians playing the hands which they were dealt (and losing). The dead piled across the pavement while a man in flames ran down a staircase in hysterics, his final moments reduced to a viral video on social media.
The accident occurred after the train conductor left his car to fight with another conductor, making no attempt to put on the brakes. The locomotive came free and gathered speed towards the ensuing tragedy. Transportation Minister Hisham Arafat resigned from his position — a Band-Aid solution that failed to resolve the underlying corruption and negligence plaguing the railway industry (and everything else) in Egypt.
“Is it my fate to die (on the tracks)?” asked a man travelling from Upper Egypt. “It happens all the time … what do the authorities do?”
His comments speak to a larger narrative facing Egypt and the Arab world at large. And in the wake of the tragic explosions that devastated Beirut, that sentiment has only grown stronger: Why are we expendable to our overlords? Why must we die?
More than 1.4 million Egyptians travel by rail every day, making it a pivotal component of the nation’s transport system. And yet, train accidents are commonplace, numbingly so. Official statistics claim 1,557 train accidents in 2017, up from 1,249 in 2016. Major accidents date back to the 1990s — the height of Egyptian negligence under now-deposed President Hosni Mubarak. The death tolls are different each time; 25, 41, 75, 300 — does it even matter anymore?
The worst train accident in Egyptian history was the El Ayyat train disaster, which occurred in February 2002 — almost 17 years prior to the Ramses station tragedy. A cooking gas cylinder exploded in the fifth carriage of an eleven-carriage train, engulfing seven third-class carriages. Official figures claimed 383 dead, though it is believed to be grossly inaccurate given that each carriage was far above capacity. The absence of a full passenger list only served to fuel speculation regarding the official figure. In the end, government negligence and incompetence was at fault, as is always the case.
The blast at the Port of Beirut, which resulted in hundreds of deaths (with countless others missing), at least 4000 injured, and approximately 300,000 homeless, was also the result of corruption and cronyism of warlords and despots who spent the last 30 years turning Lebanon into their personal fiefdom.
The Lebanese state confiscated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate and stored it within the port since 2014 with complete disregard for safety measures of the incalculable danger it possesses. Despite repeated efforts by custom officials to dispose of the chemicals, the state did not respond and the ticking time-bomb was left counting down to an inevitable tragedy.
It wasn’t Israel. It wasn’t Hezbollah. It wasn’t terrorism. No, this was far worse: this was government negligence and corruption on a mass scale.
Negligence begets tragedy. Corruption begets death.
This is the Arab story.
Lebanon was already suffering. This is a country dealing with an economic meltdown, a collapsing currency, soaring poverty and hunger, and the aftermath of the 2019 uprising. This is a country that survived a 15-year civil war and the constant specter of militant strikes and sectarian strife. This is a country well accustomed to tragedy. And yet, did they really need another one? Did more Arabs have to suffer and die unnecessarily? Where is the compassion? Where is the dignity? Where are our basic human rights? Are we doomed to suffer in our countries or watch from afar, traumatized with survivor’s guilt?
And yet, we can’t seem to turn our backs on the countries, even though those homelands have actively sought to destroy us.
Hamed Sinno, the Lebanese lead singer of alternative rock band Mashrou’ Leila — who himself is gay and an LGBTQ+ activist now residing in New York — spoke for many of us in the Arab diaspora when he shared his thoughts on the Beirut blast: “Beirut I hate you so much for making me leave. I hate you for everything you’ve taken from me. I hate you for everything you’ve taken from my mother. I hate you so much for finding a way to punish me when I’m not even there. Beirut I hate you as much as I hate myself for still belonging to you.”
From Beirut, Cairo, Aleppo, Gaza, Sana’a or Baghdad, the story remains the same; an endless cycle of tragedy, misery, and reconditioning. We rebuild our destroyed buildings, our ancient railways ripe for disasters, our terrorized landmarks, and our damaged souls, only for them to be torn down again. It is exhausting and demoralizing, especially when it doesn’t have to be this way.
As Egyptian professor and scholar Amro Ali put it, the Arab world is in dire need of a new “social contract,” one that reevaluates the authority of the state over the individual, one that reestablishes good faith, rights and social order, one that says that we don’t have to die just because we are Arabs.
