low moment of public confidence

The doorman knocked on my door an hour ago, saying that there would now be a padlock on the front door of the building. He presented me with a key. (We already had a padlock for awhile last March, but over the summer it fell into disuse.)

Gsquare86 (activist Gigi Ibrahim) tweeted tonight that there was a big jewelry store robbery in the suburb of Ma’adi, involving a gang with automatic weapons. You have to understand that such things have been unheard of until quite recently. Cairo has been almost staggeringly safe for most of my time here.

Does this prove that we need even more police and army control to restore law and order? No. Instead, I find myself uncharacteristically gravitating towards conspiracy theories along “Who does it benefit?” lines.

To repeat: the reason Egyptians love conspiracy theories is that they’re surrounded by so many conspiracies!