Skulduggery In Cairo

The aspect of the still-unfolding Egypt story that most surprises me is its back-and-forthiness. From other uprisings, successful and failed, of the modern news era, we've grown used to a simple narrative structure. The protest builds, reaches an inflection point, at which point the regime either cracks or definitively cracks down.

As if the antagonists of the Egypt narrative have studied Hamlet's Hit Points, and are manipulating its up and down beats, we keep seeing reversals, with no clear inflection point in sight. The regime appears to crack, and is then revealed to be temporizing, deceiving, and regrouping. If the entrenched elite wins, it will be more by subterfuge and endurance than by force. (Force has been employed, resulting in a death toll in the hundreds, but no decisive win for the power structure.)

In short, Mubarak and his circle are playing a game of Skulduggery with the aspirations and lives of the Egyptian people. They may backstab each other in the process, but are all vying to be the new boss who is the same as the old boss.

I wish I knew enough about Egypt in particular or the Arab world in general to write a Skulduggery scenario to shed appropriately satiric light on the situation. Sadly my grasp on the region isn't strong enough to avoid misrepresentation and cliché.

It would make a great pitch for a PDF scenario pack for anyone out there who is better versed.