Day 99: Three Months Later

Day 99; July 3, 2020
Global Cases:  11, 182, 576; Deaths: 528, 409
Egypt Cases: 72, 711; Deaths: 3, 201

Mariam El Prince
History Alumna

Three months of lockdown have given me ample time to ponder on my deeply-rooted views and my understanding of this world through a historian’s lens.

History is formed over the course of centuries, decades, months, and days, making time and relevant notions critical to understating the course of events.

Inside classrooms, we spent weeks contemplating two theories tackling the flow of history along the banks of time; those are the linear and the cyclical concepts which often lead to heated intellectual debate.

The cyclical approach views time as a series of recurring events that take place in an inevitably fixed pattern.

Things might look different, but the past is echoed in each and every aspect of the present, and what is long gone will come to life once again. We often find that countries with glorious pasts yet a declined state of affairs now to be among the loudest proponents of this approach.

A linear perspective is not proud, but ultimately optimistic.

The predominantly progressive mindset is not looking behind for a second and believes in cause and effect where events are linked together in such a way that the past is pushing the present forward toward a prosperous future.

There is no turning back.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.

Those countries, living their best quality of life today and daydreaming about their promising tomorrow while preferring to conceal the past, are rigorous advocates of linear time.

The thing is, whenever we embark on a new journey, we always look behind and, whether this past is worthy of pride or not, it is an inseparable part of our essence and the only clue to our destination.

History is honest on its own, and forces us to put our biased perspectives aside.

Just like the aforementioned examples, I have been trying to extract the historical evidence that would nourish my hopes and support my positive predictions concerning the end of this pandemic.

If the cyclical view proves right, this should be over within a year or two and maybe more, but if the linear rival reigns supreme, then this should be over sooner than we imagine, I think I will go for the latter.

The question persists, how will we ever know?

Is history a bad navigation tool or is it us who are misled?

The answer that renders me clueless and the whole world appalled is: I do not know, nobody knows.

What I do know for sure three months later is that yes, everything is linked, but there is no pattern and no causation, only subtle ripples and riddles in the dunes.