rising from the ashes

Even in chaos, there is beauty. Like the scene in Thin Red Line of the butterfly hovering over the battlefields, today in Egypt, with chaos all around, Egyptian youth have banded together to save the library from violence.

The library, built in 2002, is designed to look like a rising sun. A semi-circle, rising from the ground, it was to reference the historical library, which had been burnt twice before. But today, while riots, violence and chaos surround, students and young people of the area, have taken guard around the library to ensure its safe passage into the future.

In the New York Review of books, Ingrid D. Rowling, writes an eloquent reaction to what is going on, but what Andrew Sullivan pulled out of it is probably the best passage, where she explains why it is we destroy the beauty around us in times of crisis:

Blind rage cannot understand anything as complex or beautiful as Rome, or a library, or even a person, an animal, a book, a tree, a work of art—but blind rage can make these intricate systems stop, and the ability to make things stop has served many of our kind since time immemorial as a fine substitute for learning, experience, scientific method, artistic creation, philosophy. Destruction, too, can count as hard work.

And so, today, instead of destroying, these Egyptian youth gather together to safeguard the beauty. Not for themselves, but for the future.

The libraries director wrote the following:

The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria. They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns. The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters.