BY AHMED THARWAT
“Don’t travel to Egypt now; always have your passport with you. We don’t know what Trump will do!”
I hear this advice every day.
The morning news is a constant stream of Trump’s latest missteps — his administration’s reckless policies, impulsive decisions, and juvenile political maneuvers. One day, it’s the deportation of student protestors speaking out against genocide in Gaza. The next, it’s tariffs imposed at random. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico, seize control of the Panama Canal, occupy Greenland, and — just for good measure — he accidentally shares our military strategy for attacking Yemen. And then, of course, the inevitable question comes: “What do you think of Trump?” I am interrogated by friends and foes alike, their look at the coffee shops, with sympathy and suspicion. My friends want to make sure I’m grateful. My foes want to make sure I’m still loyal. Well, before I tell you what I think of Trump, let me tell you a story about Rafat, the village idiot.
I was born in a small village in the heart of the delta, a place with one street, one mosque, one school, one river, one mayor — and one idiot. His name was Rafat, and because of him no mother in the village has dared name her child Rafat.
Rafat was a stranger, an outsider, he was gender-neutral and non-threatening in the modern lexicon, a trans, someone who somehow belonged to everyone and anyone. He had no known family, no place to live, yet he was as much a part of the village as the call to prayer or the animal’s morning walk to the farm. He was protected by his own idiocy, by his brutal honesty, and in a way Rafat’s enigmatic life, reflected everyone’s hidden self or secret.
Rafat showed up at weddings, funerals and any social public celebrations. He was given space, welcomed in the kitchen where the mothers of the village were preparing meals. He was fed. And during local elections, he was a spectacle. Children tormented him, chasing him through the dusty roads. Adults tolerated him, dismissing his outbursts when he ranted about the village’s tangled web of corruption and secrets. Because in a village like ours, everyone had a story, and every story had a secret. Rafat was useful. He spilled the village’s hidden truths in broad daylight, saying out loud what everyone whispered behind closed doors. But he survived because he was indiscriminate and morally neutral. He exposed everyone without malice or favor, and that made him safe. The day after, everyone talked about Rafat. He was the talk of the town.
Now you have an idea about how Trump, our American village idiot, is running the country. I would not be the first to call him an idiot. Australia’s U.S. Ambassador and former prime minister Kevin Rudd called Donald Trump a “village idiot” and “incoherent.” The Lincoln Project produced a video warning Americans not to vote for an idiot. Standup comedians find lots of material every evening. Jeffery Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic said, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans” … “U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.” He added; that everybody is freaking out as if WWIII is about to begin.
This wasn’t a war plan, the White House explained, and the enemy was the Houthis, not the Chinese.
But why the pretense?
Don’t we all want transplants?
Wouldn’t we all would like to know that our military industrial complex is run by incompetent village idiots?
The big difference between our village and the U.S. is that we never trusted Rafat with the nuclear codes.
