The Dead and Wounded

Reports on casualties from the protests in Egypt vary between three points: the first being the underestimates of official sources within the Egyptian government, the second that of more reputable third parties such as the UN, and the third, unofficial figures likely true that are still higher. Just as much of the Egyptian population living in informal areas are not counted in population estimates, so they may be as invisible in their deaths. Many wounds as well, untreated or ignored as desperate protesters returned to the defense of their encampment, fall into the grey areas and peripheries of the counts. We often take these numbers (official or unofficial, listed or unlisted) as metrics of violence or ways to gauge the enormity of the situation, or as martyrs for a noble cause, or as tragic heroes of a a revolution. In the end though, the common denominator is that these people are dead, and the descriptions all fall short of the meaning of this, its outcomes, its effects, its consequences.Those slain by state security or government thugs are more than the metaphors they become, but while the metaphors live on these people will never again speak or eat or laugh or cry or even rise up in anger again.Beyond all interpretations,

The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all tombs, I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war. The unfortunate who has no hope of a change for the better has less reason to throw away his life than the prosperous who, if he survive, is always liable to a change for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall makes the most serious difference. To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope. “Pericles’ Funeral Oration” Thucidydes