When fire ravaged the building housing the upper chamber of the Egyptian parliament in August, bystanders reportedly quipped that it would have been better if the house had been in session.
The blaze and the inept attempts of the fire service to put it out provoked so much derisory comment in the independent press that a leader of the ruling National Democratic party was moved to decry the unseemly expressions of schadenfreude and assertions by some writers that the fire was an act of divine retribution.
