Storytelling guides the narrative of the Six-Day war in Egypt -El Toukhy

The New York Times continued its series of pieces on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day war. “The story of 1967 is one that Egyptians should explore and remember with nuance and sophistication — and reality. And yet that is not the story that we tell,” Nael El Toukhy writes. He says “in the Egyptian story, even the simplified one, nothing is mentioned about the Egyptian civilians who lived or died or resisted Israeli occupation in the cities around the Suez Canal; nothing is told about the Egyptian civilians who became refugees.” El Toukhy laments that individuals “don’t matter in these narratives,” saying it could explain why the occupation of the West Bank has been neglected in the Egyptian version of the tale. He says “it seems that what matters in conventional national narratives, rather than the boring facts, is the art of storytelling.”