Following strenuous negotiations, an agreement was last month engineered between the monks of Abu-Fana monastery and the ‘Arabs’—as the tribal desert dwellers in Egypt are commonly termed. The crisis involving both parties had irked public opinion since the brutal assault waged by the Arabs against the fourth century desert monastery last May when, to stop them from building a wall around the monastery grounds, they torched the monastery church, buildings, and farmlands. For the first time since barbaric attacks against Coptic monasteries were common during the dark ages, four monks were abducted and brutally tortured, then thrown on the desert track between life and death.
The widely-touted agreement stipulated the monastery would give up 95 feddans of its 600-feddan land in exchange for the right to build a fencing wall around its grounds, for the purpose of protection and maintaining peace. The agreement also stressed the importance of bringing the criminals to justice, since reconciliation does not imply letting offenders run free, conceding to oppression, or relinquishing the right of society to penalise outlaws.
At the conclusion of the agreement a celebration was held to lay the foundation stone of the fencing wall. Officials smiled down on the cameras; the few customary coins were thrown in at the site of the foundation stone as typical in such celebrations. The jubilation defied logic. Any sense of wariness or apprehension had to be pushed aside; otherwise one would have been an alleged spoil-sport.
No sooner however, had the building begun, than the problems began to emerge. It was obvious, the monastery claimed, that the governor was intent on obstructing the construction work. The wall which was to run around 505 feddans—a feddan is almost an acre—should be completed, the governor decreed, in two months time, with no chance of renewal. Worse, the governorate had confiscated a loader belonging to the monastery and would not hand it back, meaning the construction work had to be done manually. As if all has been neatly planned to abort any attempt at building that fencing wall.
The governor, moreover, reneged on the original agreement which had stipulated the wall would be four metres high, and insisted it should rise no more than 1.5m high. From an architectural viewpoint, this borders on the ridiculous.
Historically and architecturally, monasteries should be surrounded by impregnable walls ranging from three to four metres high. The height serves as a shield against any assault and ensures the monastery is secluded from urban life. Even when walls around public or private buildings are built 1.5m high, further protection is achieved by adding an iron grill on top of the fence to ensure the limit of a safe height. But even this is not applicable to walls surrounding monasteries.
But the farce was not over yet. Since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began on 1 September, the monks say they have been under pressure from the governor and local politicians to give up their official claims against the offenders so they may be released and go home for Ramadan. Those who were assaulted, beaten, abused and humiliated, were now required to swallow their claims.
The real crisis is that the reconciliation jeopardises the agreement and threatens with another tragedy. And the media which rushed to report on the reconciliation never bothered to report on its disastrous aftermath. As to the Church leadership, it did not bother to issue any official declaration on the turn of the events.
