Month: November 2011

At exactly 7:00 am, I was behind the steering wheel and at 7:15, I arrived at my polling station only to be stunned by a spectacle I have never seen throughout the 30 plus years I have lived in Egypt. The queues were infinite and everyone looked as excited as if they were getting ready for a fishing trip. I tried to imbibe the same attitude as I took my place at the end of the women’s queue and got ready for a voting-day-out. I gathered that I have a minimum of three hours until I can set foot into the grounds of the polling station itself and only God knows how much time it would take inside. I unzipped by bag and reached out for my iPod, the only way I can kill all that time besides maybe making some phones and checking Twitter and Facebook to see how things were going in other parts of the country, but I changed my mind as I realized how stupid I would be to waste such a priceless chance to be among that big of a throng, especially when it is all women who did not stop talking for a split of a second.

From the first moment, it was easy to detect an amazing microcosm of Egypt in this queue. I saw a considerable number of women who look like me, jeans and no headscarves, some apparently Christian, a lot who look like the majority of Egyptians, conservative outfit and headscarf, and a few who looked pretty hard line, covered in black from head to toe. The first group, Muslims and Christians, were obviously the liberal bunch who voiced their fears of a religious state and started speculating on what the likely scenario would be in case Islamists win a majority. Christians, the ones I recognized by the cross they were wearing, gasped and screamed and talked about relatives in North America and chances of asylum “anywhere but here.” The second group was the most diverse for while some of them did not mind liberal forces coming to power as long as they preserve the Islamic identity of Egypt and not come near the article in the constitution that makes this clear, others saw moderate Islamic parties the only solution to maintaining this balance and argued that Christians are overreacting; some of them were all for parties and candidates that represent the revolutionary youth regardless of their political affiliations because according to them “these are the good ones who really love the country.” The third and last group, of whom I only saw two, was quite predictable. They said little about the elections besides portraying the ultra-conservative Salafis as the sole saviors of the people and the sole guardians of God’s laws and talked more about women’s role in bringing up men who will run the country and also in cleaning the streets … Don’t ask me what the last bit meant because I decided against asking her and I don’t regret it!

As much as I enjoyed being in the middle of that patchwork of Egyptian society and seeing everybody speak their mind in front of others they knew would disagree with them, I have to admit that being among only women is quite tiresome not only because you can’t have one moment of quiet or because there is too much focus on details, but also because many women in Egypt, and this is not the first time I have noticed this, think it is totally fine to touch each other and are quite shocked when you complain as if this was done to you by a man. This reminded me of the one time I decided to get on the women-only car in the underground and one of the passengers literally sat on my lap then when I objected, she snapped, “Aren’t we both women?” Kids were another issue for if you add to the trouble of standing for hours and listening to a dozen people talk at the same time little creatures pulling at your pants or running between your legs or punching you in the knee, you can easily go out of your mind.

Every half hour, part of the male queue and another of its female counterpart was admitted to the polling station where inside they were divided alphabetically among rooms where they were supposed to cast their vote by filling in two papers, one for party lists and another for independent candidates. You get to know the number of your room and your own number on the list of voters in this room from the internet or via a phone service, and I have to admit I was so impressed with seeing each and every one holding a little piece of paper with those two numbers. This made things a bit easier when we went into the polling station even though it took ages to admit voters one by one in their respective rooms. When I finally submitted my ID and was handed the voting cards, I was as elated as I could be. Yes, I was happy to be doing this, but I am afraid my aching calves and pulsating feet were starting to take precedence. After voting for my candidates, I dipped my finger in some blue ink (which I estimate would take at least two weeks to come off) but I am fine with a little democracy mole at the tip of my thumb!

After I was done I maneuvered my way out as I marveled at the madly increasing numbers and the endless queues that extended all around the polling station and into the neighboring streets.

I passed by the men’s queue and made a huge effort to listen to what they were saying, but I failed. Some had earphones plugged in, others had their heads buried in newspapers, and many had their fingers tapping nonstop on their Blackberrys. None talked! As I walked past no less than 500 mutes on my way to the car, I thanked God for being a woman and felt suddenly reconciled with the squeezing and the kids and the headache and realized how proud I was to see my female compatriots of all looks and sorts and regardless of what ideology they are out to defend aware of the role they need to play in determining the future of this country that is in bad need of the passion of each of its citizens. They were not squeezing each other and had no kids, and I have to give them that, though!

It took me 15 minutes to reach the polling station in the morning and exactly three hours and a half to return home. I can’t deny that I was on the verge of throwing a fit each time I saw nothing in the horizon but zillions of non-moving cars and that by the time I arrived I was as stiff as a wood plank and my stomach was screaming with hunger and my head was shutting off for lack of caffeine. But I can’t deny that every time I was about to lose my temper, I looked around at my fellow motorists, who usually jump each others’ throats in traffic jams and treat driving as a video game, only to see patience and contentment and to find myself cooling down and recalling a unique experience that deserves giving what it takes to see it happen.

I also remembered how depressed I got in the morning when the streets were empty and my demons started messing up with my head again: “You are the only one!” and felt that only a spoiled brat who wants to catch a hairdresser’s appointment would get cranky in such a situation and not one that claims to be a patriot whose top priority is seeing that power is really to the people. I chose to be the second and started thinking of how delicious my first post-election dinner would taste!

But wait a minute, people say, you might be a little bit too hard on the man for how do you know he is directly involved in what is happening in Tahrir Square? Is there any proof he gave direct orders to security forces to shoot at protestors and spray them with toxic gases? I have been hearing this kind of gibberish — another very polite euphemism — since January when many were wondering if Mubarak knew the Interior Ministry was firing live ammunition at peaceful demonstrators. I am fed up with these questions and even more fed up with repeating the same answer again and again, but let me do so one last time for the record. In a totalitarian regime, all the threads gather in the hands of the sole leader and there is no way any institution in the country, no matter how influential, or any official, no matter how senior, can make any decisions or take any measures, especially ones as serious as the killing of unarmed civilians, without his approval if not his outright instructions. It is not much different in democracies where by virtue of your position you are held accountable for any violation in the state bodies that fall under your jurisdiction regardless of whether you are directly involved or not and even if you only get to hear about it in the news. This is based on the logical assumption that the moment you take office, you become in charge of everything your job description dictates and like you take credit for achievements, you also accept blame for failures. This is called “political responsibility,” a term almost never heard of in our part of the world where boats sink and trains crash and the minister of transportation stays and where citizens are tortured to death in police stations and the minister of interior is not even reprimanded.

In case the concept is too difficult for my fellow-oppressed to understand, perhaps it might help them to read about former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan who resigned after only 15 months in office for not being able to handle the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami and the nuclear crisis that followed. Of course I don’t need to point out that with disasters of that kind it is always easy to point fingers at Mother Nature and emerge absolutely guilt-free.

But seems like bowing is a strictly Japanese custom that requires a degree of elasticity our stiff-backed leaders do not posses and the subsequent pain is too much for joints that have for years been maintaining the same posture. Osteoarthritis maybe!

Un-budging and standing tall, the statuesque Field Marshal starts off with how “sorry” he is for the people who were killed. Sorry? I thought this is the word you use for stepping on someone’s foot or interrupting a conversation and similar violations of social etiquette, but for dead people? Well, maybe in the case of Japan when you are not in any way responsible for their death, but when you are the cold-blooded murderer? I bet it was in a situation similar to this that the word “cheeky” was coined and maybe in the same situation the Egyptian proverb about mourning your victims saw the light.

You don’t only refuse to confess to your crime, but you go on forever about how infallible you are and how keen you have always been to protect the people and see the goals of the revolution they sacrificed their lives for realized. You also try to give an entire population who sees you killing their folks a guilt trip through telling them how hurt you are to hear such unfair accusations hurled against you and you stress how noble you are to forgive such a grave effrontery. You also remind all Egyptians that they would have been all doomed had you not interfered to save them from a certain death and that unless you jump on board their life boat right here and now, you are bound to land in the bottom of the deep blue.

I feel that I and my fellow compatriots are such ungrateful bastards and that we better come back to our senses before it’s too late. As I feel horrible to discover how unfair I turned out to be and pick up a tissue to wipe the tears of regret that have started trickling down my cheeks, I start coughing my heart out and I wake up from this trance to the tons of chemicals I inhaled and to scenes that keep hopping in my face of people gasping for breath and others soaked in their blood and others trying to come to terms with loved ones lost in the split of a second. As if the exposure of some strange substance that is reportedly used in chemical warfare is not enough, I start getting cramps in my stomach and a crippling nausea attacks me ferociously. At the moment I am about to faint with repulsion and indignation, I frantically seize the remote control and flip through the channels and in every single one I see nothing but Egyptians betrayed, battered, humiliated, and brutally punished for asking for their basic rights.

I feel a deep pain in my chest as I try to breathe the sigh of coming back to reality and regain my dwindling power for another day of struggle against a tyranny that we mistakenly and naively thought was gone for good.

I get up and do some stretching exercise and take pride in my amazing ability to bow.

To be honest, I have to admit that I actually heard the expression “supra-constitutional” before in reference to international human rights laws, which are believed to transcend the constitutions of countries. This basically meant that conventions stating the basic rights any human being should be granted regardless of which country he/she comes from should be endowed with a higher status than individual constitutions and which might focus on issues mostly pertaining to this specific country. So, if your country’s constitution in does not explicitly mention that you are, for example, entitled to a dignified treatment regardless of race, religion, or class, you are not deprived of this right since by virtue of being human you fall under the jurisdiction of international treaties presumably created for safeguarding this species. Whether this really provides you with any kind of protection and whether the country you come from finds its own constitution binding to start with is not of great help as far as trying to find a meaning for “supra-constitution” is concerned.

The above-mentioned definition presents the “supra-constitution” as a noble attempt to create a universal shelter for all the inhabitants of the planet and to place human rights above all border-bound constitutions and politically-oriented laws. Not exactly realistic, but definitely commonsensical. Any sane person, and I claim to be one, would perfectly understand the rationale behind such a holistic approach to humanity, but would miserably fail to fathom how one single country can have two constitutions—one “supra” and another “infra.” Actually, the latter does not even exist and only God knows when and if it will see the light.

Like the birth of freaks is accompanied by turbulent acts of nature, several paranormal incidents heralded the inception of the “supra-constitution.” It all started with the referendum on a bunch of constitutional amendments, the most important of which concerned the writing of the constitution. According to the new article, which was approved together with the entire bouquet—people said “yes” or “no” to all the amendments and not to one by one—the constitution is to be written by a committee of 100 parliament members to be elected also by parliament members. The question that popped up right there and then was: What members? Which parliament? We didn’t have the second, so logically the first was nowhere to be found. But came the answer: The new elected parliament. So the elections will take place without a constitution? Indeed. Aren’t a couple of amendments enough to walk the country through something as minor as parliamentary elections? Of course they are.

And Egypt, thereby, welcomed the Constitutional Declaration, the name given to the document approved by 77 percent of the voters. Let me point out that the referendum was on nine articles, but we were so good to be rewarded with 63. Let me also point out that the outcome of the vote was the fruit of a relentless campaign launched by Islamists in which average people were brainwashed into believing that disapproving of the amendments would mean writing a constitution from scratch and therefore removing Article 2 that makes Islam the official religion and Islamic law the main source of legislation, which will of course be immediately followed by canceling Islam from Egypt and forcing Egyptians to convert to Buddhism and imposing fines on citizens who abstain from eating pork! It never occurred to the 14-plus million who said “yes” that Islamists wanted to make sure they stand the biggest chance of forming this committee and were counting on administering an intensive Islam-is-under-attack dose that would certainly win them a parliamentary majority. At that time I asked myself a simple question: If using religious slogans is illegal in elections, shouldn’t the same apply to referenda? Apparently not! Somebody wanted those who said “no” to religious manipulation and who saw no alternative to a civil state to cower in fright as they see the specter of a theocracy looming in the horizon and cry out for help. I went crazy trying to guess who!

Well, that kind of worked. The Constitution First campaign betrayed a great deal of nervousness on the part of liberals who looked to have suddenly realized that their chances of taking part in writing the constitution were diminishing by the minute. It was then that they insisted the constitution be drafted before the elections by a committee that includes all sectors and classes in the Egyptian society. Too late, Islamists scoffed as they accused their opponents of revoking the results of a democratic process in which the people chose how they want the constitution to be written. I can’t blame them. I would have never missed such an easy and logical — quite a rare combination—chance for the whole world and I would have definitely flashed the democracy card in their faces and maybe even stuck my tongue at them.

It looked like a dead end. The Supreme Council for the Armed Forces could not just cancel the result of the referendum at the time it claimed to be the sole guardian of the Egyptian revolution and the heroic advocate of democracy, but it could still take into its arms those scared children and rock them to sleep with a little lullaby: “Close your eyes and have no fear. The monster’s gone; he’s on the run, and mommy’s here!” Another little document can do the job. It’s pretty simple. Let’s just tamper with one little article in the Constitutional Declaration and make a tiny change in the number of its members from the parliament so instead of 100 they will only drop to 20. The remaining 80 will be chosen to cover the whole spectrum of the Egyptian society through including representatives of 20 different sectors like the judiciary, university professors, trade unions, businessmen, farmers, Muslim and Christian clergy, and guess who? The Armed Forces. Who chooses those representatives? Too much guessing I suppose!

But this violates the provisional constitution and breaks the rules according to which the permanent constitution will be written and disregards the referendum about the constitution. What has this gotten to do with that anyway? This is a “supra-constitution” and this is how we might arrive at a potential definition. A “supra-constitution” is a document where you add articles that are not in the constitution and twist or annul or reinterpret articles that are in the constitution and, by virtue of being “above” the constitution, it is not subject to referenda and such trivial processes that only make people fight. It can also contain some articles about human dignity, freedom of expression, faith, and movement, the protection of individual property, the right to a clean environment and a proper education and similar principles that make the document look as “supra-constitutional” as human rights organizations meant when they started using the term and that should make us the one self-sufficient country in which any universal statute is rendered absolutely unnecessary.

It will also contain the price, the terms of the allegiance you will forever pledge to the makers of the “supra-constitution” for allaying your fears and appeasing the likes of you who dread the day Egypt will be an Islamic state: The Supreme Council for the Armed Forces is untouchable. You have the right to form a civil state, but you will forever remember that your loyalty stays with the army; you have the freedom to file lawsuits and protest corruption and promote democracy, but are absolutely prohibited from looking into issues related to army including the budget, which is to feature as one entry and one single digit in the state budget, and any legislation related to the army. The civil president needs to take the approval of the military council before declaring war. The council also becomes authorized to form a new committee to draft the constitution in case the first one fails to do so or in case the constitution it comes up with violates the Constitutional Declaration which the council is violating at this very moment … Oops! Forgot the “supra-constitution” is entitled to violate as it may. Sorry, I and my stupid fellow-Egyptians will need some training on that!

I remember one time our beloved bygone president once gave the Egyptian people the choice between his regime and chaos, the latter always used to denote Islamist rule. Now our beloved seemingly-never-to-be-bygone army is giving us the choice between full military control and the same kind of chaos.

I guess now I understand what or who “supra” refers to and I am sure I have absolutely no clue what “constitution” is supposed to mean.

However, there are always times when you smash that mirror into pieces the moment you realize how ugly your face is and how unready you are to accept this revelation for a fact. The fool was never utterly safe and all the privileges he might be envied for by all those unable to direct the slightest blame at the king could in a spilt of a second bring about his destruction. The king might present his fool as mentally deficient and might pretend that he did not take his words seriously, but deep down he knew how perfectly sane the fellow was and how dexterously he used — and at time overused or even abused — the license given to him to lash out at his master. Like any despot who would rather exterminate all his people than have any of them expose him for what he really was, the king’s tolerance could wear thin when the assault was too much to take even from a man generally considered out of his mind and the time might come when he struck back with corporal punishment, banishment, or even death.

Let me also tell you that with all the space the fool was given to criticize the king, he was not really at liberty to do so whenever he felt like it, for he had other tasks to perform like dancing, singing, and telling jokes and he was basically there to entertain the king, which becomes obvious in the clown-like costumes he was known to wear. This entertainment might at times take the form of personal advice or political commentary, but only when the king’s mood permitted it to be so. This means that if the king embarked on some reckless action that he knew very well would infuriate his people and court alike and might even be detrimental to the entire kingdom yet that he is adamant on doing, he might order the only person who would tell him to his face how stupid he was to mimic the mating call of the wild boar or to jump around the throne like a baby orangutan. And in no time, the sage turns into a pet.

History never ceases to repeat itself and only wise nations benefit from humanity’s past experiences and that is exactly what the current regime of Egypt is doing as it is apparently seeing the merits of bringing back to a country taking heavy toddler steps towards democracy a tradition that offers the ideal example of creating a semblance of freedom and programming its spokespeople to talk only when they are given permission and to shut up or let out any kind of gibberish when their talk becomes too critical to be tolerated and too true to be voiced.

For some odd reason, the arrest of Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel-Fattah took me back in time to the era of court fools as I suddenly realized that this is what the Higher Council for the Armed Forces is trying to create of those activists who mistakenly interpreted the freedom they have been given following the revolution to be limitless and who felt too safe to see detention, military trials, and charges of incitement coming their way.

Unfortunately, Abdel-Fattah was not a trained fool for he didn’t know when he should stop and was not aware of the consequences of pissing the king off. He was unable to make the distinction between criticizing the army for the way it runs the country or the lack of a clear time frame for the transition of power on one hand and accusing the army of murdering civilians and hijacking the revolution on the other hand. That was the line any professional fool would have never crossed and that was the time he would have identified as solely dedicated to dim-witted jokes and acrobatic stunts.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah is no such “fool” and neither are his fellow activists nor any of the Egyptian revolutionaries. None of those will dance around the king while he is dragging the kingdom to its doom for then they will be busy uprooting that throne he mistook to be eternal and making sure he realizes that it is only thanks to them he is sitting there, that pets are not always friendly, and that fools are always labeled as such only by those who most deserve this designation and spare no effort to earn it.

A touch of transparency was also necessary at a moment that detrimental to the image of the U.S. in front of the International Community and it was then the turn of the big man, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who in an impressive show of honesty announced the presence of more pictures and videos that show the different types of abuse Iraqi prisoners were subjected to and it was actually the Pentagon that showed them. And because retribution is the only way a sin might be forgiven, this was followed by a spat of court martial trials and prison sentences for those directly involved in the practice of torture and dishonorable discharge or demotion for those implicated by virtue of political responsibility. Bottom line was whether or not you think the abuses were approved, explicitly or tacitly, by the U.S. administration was beside the point, for all the denouncing statements, the public apologies, and the prompt punishments presented the superpower as the perfect democracy that does not hesitate to impose the strictest of penalties on its own citizens the moment they are proven to have deviated from the moral path it has charted for itself and for the rest of the world. You would know that those soldiers, sadist as they were, were sheer scapegoats that had to be sacrificed for the nobler cause of acquitting good old America from the most disgraceful charge that can be leveled at a country that labels itself democratic: double standards.

And till this very moment, Abu Ghraib remains the biggest skeleton in the United States’ war on terror closet, but no one can deny that they have done their best to keep it locked in.

When the picture of a 28-year-old Egyptian man with a fractured skull, a broken nose, a dislocated jaw, and a disfigured face were all over the internet, officials assumed that all Egyptians are either blind or stupid or both and insisted that the deceased was not subjected to any sort of torture and that he died after swallowing a bag of marijuana for fear of being caught by the police. Of course, the widely-circulated and more logical version of the story ─ that he was beaten to death for having in his possession a video that showed police officers dealing in drugs ─ was officially dismissed as the product of the sick imagination of a few delinquents who are out to destabilize national security serve foreign agendas. Anyone who had the slightest doubt could always go back to the fabricated forensic report to make sure none of this gibberish held water. Only after the regime was ousted did the brave young man, who was amongst the main triggers of the revolution, get a proper chance to be vindicated and with the first report discarded and another issued stating that the marijuana bag was indeed forced down his throat and that he was brutally beaten, a sigh of relief was let out by the millions awaiting the final act of justice. Too soon it seemed, for while first-degree murder sounded like the most logical charge, the two policemen were found guilty of manslaughter and while nothing less than a life sentence felt like a fair verdict, they got seven years each.

Khaled Saeid will forever haunt the Egyptian regime both before and after the revolution and will forever remain a symbol of a dictatorship that brazenly washes its hands of the blood of the very victims it kills in cold blood.

When a 24-year-old Egyptian prisoner was announced dead after brutal torture by the guards for smuggling a mobile phone SIM card into his cell and after eyewitnesses confirmed he was sodomized, beaten, and forced to drink detergents through a tube inserted in his mouth, the same template was flashed in the face of despondent Egyptians who had not yet gotten over the absurd verdict that a few days before equated pre-determined murder with pick-pocketing. Once again, the victim turned out to have been poisoned after swallowing an overdose of narcotics. The circumstances in which the autopsy took place and the integrity of those who carried it out remain a mystery that will probably be solved after the next revolution … or not.

The death of Essam Atta is the unfortunate proof that little has changed and the cruel lesson that Egyptians should not expect an apology because they do not deserve one and because whoever governs them owes them nothing whatsoever.

While torture remains the easiest and fastest way of dealing with a wide range of problems for both, democracies take the time and effort to embellish the ugliest of truths and to emerge repentant in the very situations they had no scruples about a few minutes before they were made public while dictatorships feel they need not go through the hassle simply because atrocities are their middle name and there is no reason why anyone should be shocked when they are committed or why anyone should expect the wrong to be righted when it is revealed.

You are screwed anyway, but who screws you is what makes the difference. You either get an apology or you are told to go to hell. None heals the scars nor brings back the dead, but one makes you live in the illusion of democracy while the other keeps welcoming you to dark dungeons of dictatorship.