Fifth: the main idea, the sub-ideas and the historical depth

05Fifth: the main idea, the sub-ideas and the historical depth

The main idea

• The deep roots of national unity between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, and the interweaving of the Islamic and the Christian fabric with the coming of Ramadan.

The sub-ideas

• Emotional sharing in the celebration of Ramadan between neighbours of the two faiths.
• Warm memories and their role in the heart and in handing experience to later generations.
• The meeting of generations and the exchange of knowledge between the narrator and his friend — each versed in the rites of his own religion: Aslan in fasting, the call to prayer and the breaking of the fast; Al-Kharrat in the names and sites of churches.
• Longing for the past, and what the crowding of buildings does in screening the beauty of that past and its source of happiness and meeting.

The historical depth

• The human common ground between the revealed religions is something Egyptians have had a large share in since the Islamic conquest by Amr ibn al-As in the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab and the building of al-Fustat.
• Amr granted safety to the Christians among the people of the land, so they performed the tolerance of Islam — embodied in the Assurance of Umar (al-Uhda al-Umariyyah) for the people of Iliya (Jerusalem).
• Egypt lived whole with its crescent and its cross, and this appeared in the revolution of 1919 under Saad Zaghlul.