Nobody is just watching the street

In a building in Port Said, the residents talk about their street the way people talk about events in another country. The pavement is broken and has been for years. The tree by the entrance is dying. The bins on the corner overflow every weekend. Each is discussed, sighed over, and filed as something that happens to them.

It is an easy habit to fall into, and the news encourages it. So much of what we hear is presented as something to follow: decisions made somewhere else, by someone else, which we can track closely but never touch. After enough of that, everything starts to feel far away, including the things outside our own door.

But the street is not far away. The tree needs water, and there is a tap in the entrance. The broken pavement has a municipal office responsible for it, and an office answers more readily to twenty signatures than to none. The bins overflow because of when people carry their rubbish down, which is a decision made in every flat in the building.

None of this would remake Port Said. It does not have to. What looks like a condition is usually the sum of many small choices, and some of those choices are ours. Doing nothing is one of them. It has consequences too; they are simply the ones already in front of us.

The residents are not spectators. Nobody is. The only question is whether they choose on purpose, and, if they do not, who exactly they are waiting for.