During Lebanon’s devastating civil war, the great Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani called upon Beirut to rise from the rubble, for the sake of the forests, the rivers, and humanity itself. Now, nearly half a century later, Cairo is hearing another call, not from a poet but history itself. Egypt, the heir to a civilization stretching back thousands of years, is being called upon not merely to honor its extraordinary past, but to fulfill its historic role in a Middle East increasingly threatened by war,
