The way I see it, Egypt is a place where society has found an intricate way of forming an inter-dependent relationship between the privileged few and the less privileged masses. The very stability of the social system is determined by how well this relationship functions. The lives and ways of life of the two groups respectively depend on each other. For the many poor, it is literally their life that hangs on the others’ and for the few, it is very much their way of life.
Having said that, Egypt has changed since the time I grew up, is still changing and as with all places cannot be reduced to a fixed and by-definition subjective description. The description here is simply the Egypt I grew up in from my subjective experience view.