Letter from Cairo: From the couch with love

The note does not really focus on what the Couch Party is like, why it was formed, or how it feels about being called as such although several of those questions are more or less answered in the comments that have been flowing till yesterday. The only information Amin provides about the party he formed, or rather named, was that it includes both supporters and opponents of the revolution, which sounds like quite a huge ideological discrepancy if we’re talking about members of the same party, but that did not matter to him. What really interested Mr. Amin was the fact that, by virtue of being stationed between the cushions, members of this party, both the cheering and booing camps, have centered their lives around the TV set a few steps away and which they thought would give a real live transmission of the world outside.

In an attempt to dissipate the confusion triggered by absence from the scene of action, the writer of the note decided to bring Tahrir to the living room for a few minutes through answering 20 questions that he imagined are the most pressing in the minds of couch dwellers and the most recurrent in conversations conducted on or around the headquarters of the new party—who the January 25 youths are and why they still have demands after toppling the regime, and the meaning of words that had suddenly become part of the daily speech of every Egyptian family like “counter revolution,” “secular,” and “technocrat.”

He also tackles rumors that only people at home would believe like the involvement of the United States, Israel, and Iran in the revolution, addresses the naivety that only those who follow the popular uprising from the “fauteuil loge” develop and which results in assuming that Mr. Mubarak was not aware of any wrongdoing in the country and that it was the people around him who were “bad,” and shakes off that susceptibility to emotional manipulation that brings some of the revolution audiences to tears in sympathy with the deposed president. Amazing how insightful those questions are to the extent that you come to wonder whether Mr. Amin himself is a founding member of the Couch Party. In fact, in the last question, he assumes that he will be asked by party members whether he took part in the protests—even though the answer is in every line—and he replies that he would rather keep that to himself then ends by saying, “Many happy returns of the revolution.”

By founding the party yet neither listing any of its attributes nor stating his take on the stance of its members, Mr. Amin has stirred in me—and I bet many others—a relentless curiosity to explore the reasons behind some people’s decision to make of the revolution another Avatar experience—at least the latter was 3D—and the means through which they acquired this extraordinary ability of self-distancing.

First we need to think who qualifies to be a member of the Couch Party. I, for one, would exclude those who opposed the revolution from the very beginning and argued throughout that the protestors were out to destroy the country—the comfiest of couches are designed for those in fact—and those who supported the revolution and felt the couch as cozy as a bed of thorns yet had very strong reasons not to leave home—fear not being one of those from my own point of view. I would say that the Couch Party consists of those who had the ability to go and chose not to, citing all sorts of reasons that hardly reflect the truth, ones which they themselves might not have delved deep enough into their souls to be aware of.

When talking about the Couch Party, there is one important thing we have to remember: Egypt had for decades not gotten up from the couch. So, you can imagine the repercussions of the abrupt shift from an absolutely sedentary lifestyle to the most vigorous of physical, mental, and emotional activities. Could you in a couple of days breathe life into your inert muscles and shake those loads of flesh off your bones as well as battle osteoporosis, depression, diabetes, heart problems and all other impacts of having yourself seated in the same place for years?

That would be a “miracle,” and that is exactly what the revolution proved to be. What about those who jumped off the couch in a split of a second and looked like they had been Olympic champions all their lives? Well, these had occasional trips away from the couch and had enough warm up to get them going. They were either activists or social workers who had always lobbied for change, members of opposition parties and youth movements who had always made public their wish to see the regime go, laborers who organized dozens of demonstrations in protest of their deplorable working and financial conditions, or even disgruntled citizens inside whom a revolution was slowly fomenting with every frustration they encounter and every humiliation they are subjected to.

As for the others, they had nothing to complain about or so they thought. As long as you have a decent job, live in a nice house—with the right kind of couch of course—and drive an air conditioned car, and are not really interested in what happens outside the little circle at whose center you sustain your grand existence, then why bother? Even those who every now and then found it tempting to give their blood circulation a boost were quickly beaten by the pain that comes with the first exercise, so they ended up like those who keep saying, “Tomorrow I go to the gym” and never do.

When calls for launching nationwide protests were all over the Internet, the soon-to-be Couch Party founders said, “Nothing will happen.” When something did happen and the protests swept every city in Egypt, they reflected for a moment then said, “It will die.” When it didn’t, they reflected for a couple of moments, cleared their throat, then said, “They will drag the country to its perdition.” When they actually led the country through the most invigorating of births, some cheered, “I knew it! Those are the real Egyptians” and others muttered, “Who do they think they are? Let them show how they will rule.”

When the regime was toppled, the Couch General Assembly seemed to have convened an urgent meeting after realizing what an awkward situation the party has put itself into by having its members not move a part of their body other than the thumb they used to flip the channels. They had one of two options: they support the revolution and claim they have always thought Egypt would never be the same again or slam the revolution as an irresponsible act by a group of reckless youths who thought they can take charge of the country. In the first case, members were trying to save face by siding with revolution because it would seem too foolish not to after it really succeeded, while in the second case, they were trying to… well… also save face by holding on to their previous position for fear they would be called hypocrites if they change their minds. Between one way of saving face and another, none of the two groups really believes the argument it is defending; they are just looking for an exit in a situation where too much limelight is thrown upon them. Had they been given the choice, their utmost hope would have been to be left alone. Never imagining that just staying on a couch inside their houses would cause such ruckus, they might actually be wondering why while the country is going through such a critical historic transformation, so much attention is given to the people who had nothing to do with it as well as hating the moment they had to defend themselves against accusations of cowardice, indifference, and even lack of patriotism and not be able to say something along the lines of “I don’t give a damn,” which is most likely what they still feel.

The problem with the Couch Party members is not what they say to justify their previous inaction or what they do to gain the respect of those who have been slamming their passivity since the revolution started. The real problem lies in the fact that they are not aware that nobody cares now why they preferred the couch to Tahrir Square or why the popcorn was more rewarding than the country’s freedom. What is done cannot be undone, and the revolution had arrived at its goal without them, so what is to come becomes the crux of the matter now. In an attempt to take the matter to the next level and transfer this group from the realm of jokes to that of national action, the Couch Party had its name changed to “the silent majority”—of course they had no say in the second designation like they had none with the first. The definition also expanded to go beyond people who did nothing during the revolution and became people who have not been taking one stand or another in Egypt’s new political life and whose numbers—note the word “majority”—makes wooing them an urgent procedure as far as the country’s future is concerned. With the country approaching parliamentary elections and the battle heating between Islamists, mainly represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the liberals, who are now organizing their ranks in a group of nascent political parties, it has almost become a matter of life or death for each camp to win that passively troublesome group to its side and give it the voice it has been willingly deprived of.

So the situation is as follows: the couch is not the place to be at such a decisive time in Egypt’s history and apparently if they don’t get up, some force or another will unseat them. They will be left with two options: They can go with the flow and respond to whatever approaches made to them and allow themselves to be sheer tools in the hands of whatever party or movement that chooses to use them for furthering its political agendas or they can start realizing that whether they like it or not they are part of this country that now requires the contribution of each and every one of its citizens—on the couch, under the bed, doesn’t matter. If after all this, they still prefer the couch, they have to know that this time it is the point of return, for if their passivity was overlooked in the past, it will not be now, and if they are important now, they will not be in the future.

Frankly speaking, if after all this they still find the couch their safest shelter, then I am sorry to say that it is the homeland that best suits them and they will unfortunately be stuck with it forever and when at some point they try to get up, some gravitational force will pull them down again and they will realize they are there to stay.