Numbers, numbers everywhere, but not an accurate statistic in sight By Peter Schwartz, contributor, EgyptianStreets.com ‘So let me get this straight: how big were the demonstrations?’ an Irish friend recently asked me. I hummed and hawed, bandied around a few possible statistics, but then embarrassed, was forced to admit I didn’t really know. He was mightily unimpressed. After regaling him with tales of Ittihadeya crammed to the gills and suffocating-room only in Tahrir, I was supposed to have a good grasp of the situation. I don’t, though, at least not when it comes to providing precise, or even vague figures. In this, however, I’m far from alone, because Egypt, whose Pharaohs were conducting censuses when most Europeans were just about getting to grips with the wheel, has a problem with numbers. Take June 30th as a case in point: 33 million people protested against Morsi, many of his opponents say. It was more like 17 million, his more modest adversaries have asserted. No, it was around 14 million, an army official declared. A Morsi-supporting mathematician calculated a mere 2.8 million. ‘Egypt is not India,’ journalist Bassem Sabry humorously pointed out, in mocking some of the more…
