http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/03/05/198667.html
“My country remains the dearest no matter how unfair it is to me and my compatriots remain the most loving no matter how cruel they are to me.” This is my humble translation of the first two lines of a famous Arabic poem whose authorship is disputed to date. There is no need to know who the poet is or under which circumstances the poem was written to guess that it is a moving proclamation of love by an obviously oppressed patriot who argues that one’s loyalty to one’s country and compatriots is never shaken by any form of injustice one might experience within its borders. Logically speaking, these words would most likely be said by any of the activists who are constantly threatened, harassed, and imprisoned for speaking their minds and who are still unable to give up on their country no matter how much pain it might inflict upon them. Absurdly speaking, these words were amazingly said by the ousted president who is telling all Egyptians how unfairly he was treated and how, despite having every reason to hate Egypt and its people, he still loves them and will remain to do so.
The emotionally-charged verses concluded Mubarak’s address to the court on the last session before the verdict and which came as a truthful account of how honorable a president he had been and how patriotic an Egyptian he will forever be. It was, in fact, the best-written absurd text I have read since “Waiting for Godot,” a play in which two men wait endlessly for someone who never shows up and while doing so engage in all kinds of fragmented conversations that make us doubt whether they know that Godot in the first place or whether he or they exist to start with.
I will try not to go into the details of the historic statement since I find it as boring as the bedtime story my mom once told me when I asked why I was not treated like normal kids instead of being told about social justice and the power of the people and other things that at the time sounded even more cryptic than algebra. I will do my best to only focus on a few points that shed a bit of light on how attempts at fabricating the most brazen of lies combined with hopes of finding the most delusional of audience can produce the perfect live example of absolute nonsense.
I will just comment on something he has kept mentioning since the start of the revolution and which appears to be the only achievement he really made and that is why is never wastes a chance to talk about it: the role he played in the October 1973 war. Here I would like to ask a question: What was the commander of the Air Forces expected to be doing while his country was in a state of war? Be celebrating Yom Kippur with the enemy combatant? Can I keep reminding my students how benevolent I am for coming to class? Plus there has been talk anyway about how his role in the war was blown out of proportion and how that of others was totally overlooked to create that mega-size ego that neither ouster nor imprisonment seems to be able to deflate.
I might as well try to make sure who Mubarak was talking to when he mentioned the economic boom Egypt witnessed during his time. Maybe the business tycoons who were given free hand to treat national revenue as their pocket money? Or officials whose astronomical salaries, exclusive of bribes and commissions, could feed half the population? Or the privileged few who own summer houses in Palma de Mallorca and shop in Paris every season? Those are possibly the same people he intended to address when he talked about the dignified life he strove to secure to all Egyptian citizens. I assume it was just by sheer mistake that he forgot to include the 40 percent who live under poverty line and the 35 percent who have never been to school and these of course would have reminded him of the way a glass of potable water, a toilet, or a job that would secure one meal a day have become the ultimate ambition of millions of those Egyptians he claims to have made his priority.
I find it a bit hard not to feel quite intrigued by Mister President’s assertions about his unflinching support of the Palestinian cause partly because they seem quite contradictory to the progress made in inter-Palestinian relations right after he stepped down and partly owing to the fact that it is not hard at come up with concrete evidence of his relentless attempts to deepen the rift between Fatah and Hamas and his role in tightening the noose on Gaza and facilitating Israeli aggression against the strip’s defenseless residents. Yet there is no point trying to give examples of Mubarak’s wholehearted support of Israel, but maybe keywords like “natural gas” can offer a tiny insight into the last of a series of concessions offered to the friendly neighbor.
What I really fail to grasp is that hackneyed scenario he insists on reiterating whenever he gets the chance about how he would never under any cost order the police to kill unarmed revolutionaries and how, on the contrary, he gave clear instructions that they be protected and allowed to practice their right to protest and how any ensuing tragedy was the making of this group of secret operatives that officials drag into any mess they create to absolve themselves of blame — the so called “third party” or, as Mubarak chooses to call them this time, “infiltrators.” It is also quite baffling how he attempts to present police forces, who he claims were facing this unprecedented crowd of angry protestors who were out to topple the regime without live ammunition, as victims who only withdrew after being unable to deal with the situation.
It’s pointless trying to make sense of these absurdities, but is there at least any logic behind such swaggering proclamations at this time? Is Mubarak hoping these words would have an impact of some sort on the court? That is quite far-fetched especially in the light of how bland and unimpressive they are. It is more likely that the target audience is the people who are expected to gloat in case of a harsh sentence and grumble in case of a lenient one. For some odd reason, Mubarak believes he can gain the sympathy of Egyptians even if the court ruling comes in his favor. After all, an official exoneration is worth nothing without a popular one, for while probabilities of getting the first are as many as the loopholes in any law, the last is the hardest to manipulate and it is lack of it that can send anyone to eternal historical doom. This he will never get from Egyptians no matter how many speeches he gives and how many poems he recites not because of how vindictive they are but rather because he really has nothing to say to make them change their perception and that of history about him being anything other than the worst of rulers and the most exemplary of tyrants.
There is fat chance the defendant might turn out to be innocent of the charges specified in this particular case and which we all know are as hard to prove as finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Where on earth can the recordings of instructions to shoot at protestors be found? And how on earth can evidence of the suppression, impoverishment, and humiliation of an entire people by one veteran dictator be submitted to court? And what supernatural power on earth can come up with documentation of embezzlement, squandering of public resources, abuse of power over three whole decades? One morning we might even wake up to a picture of him sipping on rum punch at some Caribbean beach and sticking out his tongue at all those stupid Egyptians who once thought justice could be served. But there is no way he will go down in history as anything other than a tyrant who did everything in his capacity to degrade his people and a court verdict issued in a still-corrupt regime by an absolutely un-independent judiciary will not do anything to change that. And while his name will go hand in hand with those of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, and all those sadistic nutcases who measured their power by how much blood they spilt, the story of Egyptian revolutionaries will be written alongside the freedom struggles of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Václav Havel and all those altruistic patriots who measured their power by how much blood they prevented from spilling.
A convicted tyrant is surely better than an acquitted one but the first designation loses meaning as the second confirms it is here to stay long after court orders are recycled into grocery bags. It’s no big deal if following a long list of his crimes, a couple of words are written about how lenient their penalty was. No one would say, “Oh! Looks like he was a good man despite everything!”
In fact, the only bit that makes some sense in this entire gibberish of a speech is the final one about how history will eventually judge him for who he really is. Indeed, it will and it is indeed high time for people to learn to be careful what they wish for.
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