Category: Letter from Cairo

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/02/03/192237.html

I have never been interested in football and I don’t recall watching one single game from beginning to end and I have no idea how different a midfielder is from a quarter back. The things I am familiar with are basically that Egypt won the Africa Cup of Nation two or three times in a row and that matches between Real Madrid and Barcelona are called El Clásico, but I am totally capable of distinguishing between stadium riots and pre-meditated murder.

Football is known to be the sport with the most fanatic audience and that explains why it is maybe the only sport in which supporters of rivaling teams are seated separately and why clashes, especially in important games, have for so long been seen as common news. That is exactly the logic behind the extreme security measures seen in any football match and the urgency of safeguarding lives and property in a context where adrenaline rush becomes more hazardous than a thunderbolt. I am also totally capable of distinguishing between cases when the situation spirals out of control and the police become unable to contain the crisis, like what happened in the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster in the UK, and when the police make sure the stage is perfectly set for a blood bath and watch while it materializes, like what happened on February 1, 2012 in the Port Said Stadium in Egypt. Let me add that I am also totally capable of distinguishing between a human crush as in the first case and a homicide as in the second case.

For the longest time, I had thought of conspiracy as the easiest way out for those, usually average citizens, who do not want to bother with analyzing a specific incident and find it more comfortable to throw the blame on some sneaky power that is out to destroy the nation or those, usually the authorities, who want to distract the people from some grave mistake they have committed through keeping them busy with some imaginary culprit until they figure out what they can do to fix the problem. Yet right now I declare myself a conspiracy theorist and I insist that every single detail before, during, and after the stadium massacre was planned, coordinated, and executed with “malice aforethought” and falls, therefore, under the category of first-degree murder.

A quick look at the circumstances in which 70-plus football fans were killed and more than 1,000 injured allows the conspiracy to manifest itself in its most conspicuous form and without any effort on the part of anyone who is still wants to believe it was an accident. Fans with clubs and knives and illegal fireworks were allowed into a place where cigarette lighters and nail clippers are prohibited. Security forces were less than one fifth the numbers required to offer minimum safety to a crowd of this magnitude. Port Said governor and head of security made no appearance at the game in a suspicious violation of both protocol and tradition. The moment the game ended around 3,000 from the winning team’s part of the stadium rushed into the field from the gates that are supposed to stay locked until everyone leaves towards the losing team’s seating areas. At that very moment, the stadium’s lights were turned off. A few moments later the security barrier guarding the losing team’s area was opened to attackers who started climbing towards the seats of their targets. The terraces were turned into a battlefield as fans got fatally stabbed, strangled, hit on the head, and pushed from high altitudes while those who ran up the stairways in an attempt to escape with their lives found exist gates bolted and army officers standing on the other end not responding to their calls for help and it was only when the gates gave away under the pressure of the terrified victims that they managed to flee. Some managed to take refuge in the changing rooms and this was also where the injured, many of whom died later, were transferred. In the meantime, ambulances were no show and police and army no action.

A quick look at the victims allows the conspiracy to crystallize in a way that explains beyond doubt the motives of the murderers and the choice of the murdered. The dead and the injured are all members of the Ultras of the losing team. It might sound illogical since Ultras are mainly supporters of soccer teams who though always fanatical and at times violent are not generally involved in battle-like confrontations nor are they usually party to murder crimes whether as culprits or victims, but it does becomes absolutely logical upon remembering the role those Ultras in particular have been playing in the Egyptian revolution. Their organizational skills, physical fitness, and large numbers have not only made of the Ultras an indispensible part of the revolution and rendered their support vital in any confrontation between protestors and security forces, but also placed them as the most untamable of “trouble makers” and as the most draining challenge for the ruling junta. Add to that the Ultras’ incessant calls for toppling the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and putting its members on trial and which were deafeningly voiced all over the stadium in the last game played by the team they support. Terrorizing this group of Ultras and sending a message to other football fan groups that have started to follow in its footsteps and which were starting to join forces to organize massive rallies against the regime was just another chapter in that pathetic guide the army has been consulting every time its throne got shaken by the revolutionary tide and every time its leaders mistakenly thought the revolutionaries can be scared into abandoning the cause.

A quick look at the statement issued by the targeted Ultras group, entitled “We Demand the Execution of the Field Marshal,” reveals the plot to crush the brave youth to have turned out a miserable failure. “The Field Marshal is sending the Ultras a clear message: either we become content with practicing our freedom within the confines of stadiums or get exterminated for demanding freedom for the entire nation,” said the statement which made it clear that the retaliatory plan only made them more adamant on uprooting all forms of tyranny attempting to abort the revolution and that they are not going to wait until each and every single one of them perishes and they vowed to do all it takes to protect the revolution and make sure those who killed their brethren are duly penalized. “Yes, we have received your message,” they wrote addressing the Field Marshal. “Now, wait for the reply.”

And a quick look at the official response to the massacre puts the last piece of this self-resolving puzzle where it belongs not only because it serves as a tacit admission of involvement, but also because when placed in stark contrast with the Ultras’ reaction demonstrates how cheap Egyptian blood is for those who claim to defend it. Suffice it to compare this reaction, which is supposedly coming from the compatriots, let alone alleged protectors, of the victims to that of FIFA president the Swiss Sepp Blatter. “This is a black day for football. Such a catastrophic situation is unimaginable and should not happen,” he said expressing how “saddened” and “shocked” he feels and insisting that the incident cannot by any means be categorized under football rage. Not sure if it is relevant to mention the reaction of the Cameroonian Issa Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football who used words like “shock,” “tragedy,” and “deep mourning” in reference to the massacre. The Egyptian head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and the de facto ruler of the country, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, made a slightly different statement. “This can happen anywhere in the world,” he said nonchalantly then added a few fragmented sentences in which as far as I understood he encouraged Egyptians to track down the murderers and promised to pay compensation to the families of victims. He then ruled out any plan to dismiss the governor or the head of security in the near future and inquiring about the minister of interior would have been too stupid at that moment.

I am not sure if we have become too experienced in deciphering conspiracies or maybe conspiracies nowadays have become too brazen to require any kind of deciphering in the first place. I am only sure of one thing: creating gladiator arenas of squares and stadiums or throwing revolutionaries to the lions is the key to the fall of tyrants and the triumph of revolutions and the fiercer the counter-revolution becomes the more forceful the revolution grows.

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/27/190870.html

If I give birth to a baby who weighs something like half a kilo and it is to be placed in an incubator for a whole year, maybe more, to have its organs properly functioning, I am not sure I would be throwing a party and making a gift list. I might do so if I had been barren for years and had lost any hope of having children then suddenly and without the least effort on my part found myself pregnant and grew obsessed with the idea itself while totally overlooking how well it would materialize. So while in the first case, I would be staying up all night monitoring the baby’s progress and helping it to gently cross into normal life, in the second I would leave the poor soul struggling with the dozen tubes that provide it with a semblance of life and get busy bragging about my fertility and denying all malicious allegations about my incomplete femininity. In the first case, I am a normal woman whose main priority is to see her child healthy. In the second, I am either too insensitive and extraordinarily selfish or utterly delusional and none of those is known to be among the main characteristics of a real mother.

I really fail to understand where the people who wanted to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution were coming from and I very much doubt they are delusional, but I am almost sure of their insensitivity and have no doubt at all about their selfishness. It doesn’t take so much mental effort of any person equipped with a minimum level of sanity to look back at the past year and realize that there is no cause for celebration at all not because the revolution was a failure, but rather because it is till now too unfinished to be treated as over … unless, of course, in some peculiar forms of human behavior it is common to celebrate unachieved achievements!

I and many of my fellow “untamable” Egyptians have been continuously rebuked for how “ungrateful” and “greedy” we are and have been reminded all the time how a year and one day ago we would have never dreamed of an ousted government, a prosecuted president, and an elected parliament. Have I ever denied that? What kind of a fool would anyway? But is this all what the Egyptian people wanted when they shouted at the top of their lungs, “The people demand the toppling of the regime”? Is a regime about president and parliament? I am sorry, but this is KG-level politics and it’s about time we grow up a little bit!

Let me rephrase the question in case the previous one is too existential for people who prefer to have their fingers placed on the exact problem: In what kind of a democracy are peaceful protestors in general killed, tortured, or maimed; female protestors subjected to virginity tests or stripped of their clothes in public and the Coptic ones, also in particular, crushed beneath the wheels of armored vehicles while none of the culprits are put on a fair trial or receive a proper punishment? Is it democratic to refer tens of thousands of civilians to military courts, to raid NGO offices, to clampdown on activists, and to turn freedom demands into destruction plots? Which definition of “democracy” includes brainwashing gullible citizens into repeating words along the lines of “foreign agendas” “third parties” “anarchy” and “infiltration”? Or let me group all of those questions into a more comprehensive, yet not so abstract, one: Which of the words repeated throughout the 18 days we mistakenly thought were the duration of the revolution have turned into reality? Social justice? Citizenship? Freedom of speech? Independence of the judiciary? Purging the police force? There is so much more on the list, but this is just a portion of the demands that drove people to take to the streets on January 25, 2011.

On January 25, 2012, Egypt was divided into two camps: one that had an honest and objective answer to those questions and which decided to have a revolution re-run on that day and another that either chose to find itself illusory answers or to ignore the questions altogether and which decided it’s party time on the same day. For the second, the first were the fun killers who loved trouble for trouble’s sake and for the first, the second cared about nothing except their own gains and which took precedence over the revolution and the interests of the entire population. So in Tahrir Square was the second basking in parliament glory and pledging allegiance to the ruling authorities while all over Cairo was the first stressing that neither the demands of the revolution nor the martyrs that paid their lives to see them happen will ever be forgotten.

Joining the first camp came as naturally to me as turning around when somebody calls my name. For the first time since the start of the revolution I was surprised to see that it didn’t bother me not to be in Tahrir Square and that nothing was as fulfilling as marching through the streets of the capital that rocked under the feet and around the shouts of those freedom fighters vowing to finish what they started.

On that day, all parts of the city turned into replicas of that version of Tahrir Square that we have summoned every time we were on the verge of despondence. So yesterday I went back to not worrying about feeling thirsty because I was sure that in a split of a second a thousand bottles of water will be given to me, to not fearing harassment because I had no doubt that all those men in the crowd would take it upon themselves to protect me from any fake revolutionary, to feeling that a million plus people can feel like siblings and first cousins and bosom friends. It was during the five hours the march took that the real voice of the revolution reached every Egyptian cowering under a blanket, turning up state TV volume to the max, or signing opera in the shower. None of the revolution’s demands was missing and on top of that came bringing to justice every single official, from the most senior to the most junior, responsible for shedding the blood of innocent citizens, the equal distribution of wealth, the creation of a civil, nonreligious and nonmilitary, state, the release of political detainees. It was astonishing to see children that would not by any means exceed five years old yelling shoulder-borne that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has to step down, a group of Libyan youths declaring solidarity with their revolutionary brethren, and a women’s march swearing not to enjoy a minute of rest until they see all their abused “sisters” justly avenged.

Only such spirit would make you forget about the hunger creeping into your tummy, the muscles burning in your thighs and calves, and the vocal cords worn with protesting shouts. This same spirit makes you feel totally alright with finding not one single moving vehicle to take you back where the march started and with eventually settling for a boat ride to do the job.

Like all literature nerds, I read too much into things and that was exactly why I considered ending the day in the middle of the Nile and the liberating feelings that instilled into my and my fellow-protestors’ souls are just another symbol of where the revolution is heading and of the destiny of freedom no forces of evil can stop from happening. What I actually find more symbolic is that fact that the boatman found nowhere to drop us off except where one of Cairo’s liveliest cultural centers is located. So there we were suddenly hopping into the place and watching those who sat in the café or attended any of the center’s activities turning round and wondering where on earth we came from. That’s not new, I must say. We have always surprised our beloved compatriots… the whole world in fact. So why would yesterday out of all days be an exception? And we are determined to keep doing so until Egypt becomes what it deserves to be and until we make sure we carve our names in history as the makers of the globe’s most peaceful uprising.

Many happy returns of the revolution and many revolutionary returns of the true Egypt!

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/20/189375.html

Now the whole square had one language and one speech.

And they said, “Let us build ourselves a nation, and a democracy that puts every tyrant to shame; let us bring ourselves dignity lest our humanity becomes lost till the end of time.”

But the forces of darkness came down to see the spirit of the children of the square and they said, “Indeed those people are united and they all speak one language, and this is where the trouble lies. Now, nothing can stand between them and their dream.”

“Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that none of them would understand what the other is saying.”

So, instead of speaking in one single voice, each started shouting at the others and the others followed suit until the entire square was turned into a cacophony of jumbled sounds and deafening echoes.

And that, in a nutshell, is how the Egyptian Babel saw the light and how we all ended up talking to ourselves and even stopping to hear what we had just said. Apologies to Genesis are due of course!

Yet, one little difference makes the plight of Biblical Babylonians much milder than that of Tahrir Egyptians. In the first case, tower builders realized that each of them is the sole speaker of that strange new tongue and therefore they all had no option but to disperse across and create nations that would speak the same language. A bit later, each nation became inhabited with citizens that spoke the language of its founder and nobody felt lonely anymore. In the second case, speakers of the new languages did not have to leave at all not only because in no time language groups were created and communications remained possible even if with a more limited number of people, but also because each language now sees itself as the most superior and is therefore engaged in a survival war that aims at declaring the square a mono-lingual zone.

Some languages are approaching official status while others would be lucky if they get minority recognition, yet neither the rising popularity of former is indicative of how rich they are nor the recession of the latter is a sign of the limited vocabulary of which it is comprised. It is simply about the hurdles placed in the way of any refined language as it attempts to gain access to the majority, partly because of how detrimental its propagation is for every barbarian terminology and partly because of how challenging it might seem to those who are not in the habit of hearing, let alone using, such sophisticated idiom.

Mohamed al-Baradei is the doyen of the most endangered species of languages not only because very few are able to understand it, but also because very many are keen to install the kind of subtitles that relegate it to the position of its rival tongues. He is, in fact, this rare language with all the values that make up its nouns and the magnanimity that inform its verbs.

Anyone who listens carefully and objectively to the statement in which he announced his decision not to run for president would detect the characteristics that distinguish the Baradei language, as subtle as it is, from others, as loud as they are. It is very hard to miss this single component that dominates his discourse and which he himself mentions as the reason for his withdrawal from what he rightly sees as poorly-directed charade: dialogue with the conscience.

It goes without saying that any language must involve some kind of dialogue, but with who and about what are the crux of the matter. His is not the dialogue that curries favor with the Higher Council for the Armed Forces through turning a blind eye to their crimes against Egyptians in return for some begged-for power, that terrorizes the despondent with God’s retaliation and lures the poor with half a kilo of meat, that forges alliances with the devil as long as he exercises some influence, or that thrives on demagogic speeches and fawning applause. His is rather a dialogue in which he makes sure that, as he said, he can look into the mirror and feel self-respect and in which a set of uncompromising ethics take precedence over the most tempting of ambitions and the most desired of offices.

Baradei gave up the chance to win a position that I think none deserves as much as he does if only by virtue of being the main impetus of the revolution, let alone his integrity, courage, and patriotism, all of which made him risk his safety, reputation, and peace of mind to see real change. “But nothing whatsoever has changed,” he said as he attempted in a couple of words to justify his decision and to slap on the face whoever thought the revolution is over. The transitional period has been run in the worst way possible, official media remains the mouthpiece of a deceitful regime, the judiciary has not achieved any independence, arbitrary arrests and in-detention torture have not stopped, and the real revolutionaries are pushed to the margins while the power-hungry are hijacking the revolution.

He seemed to be asking us or let’s say those amongst us who are still impartial enough to see things for what they really are, “Would any man of honor be willing to take part in such an absurd semblance of democracy?” The logical answer is obvious for any sane person including those who saw Baradei as one of the few sources of light at the end of the tunnel and I am one of those. For the speakers of the same language, his decision might have been disappointing, yet is definitely consistent with the rules of a discourse of dignity where concessions are only permissible as long as they do not jeopardize the moral infrastructure. Those same speakers were, like him, aware that the presidency or any other official position is crippling rather than empowering in the current circumstances where apparently how much authority you get is contingent upon how skilful you are in towing the line and bending over backwards and knowing who wears the pants in the country.

In order for him and his conscience to remain engaged in this soul-searching dialogue and in order for all Baradei native speakers to stay true to the dictates of their language, they all reached the conclusion that steering away from anything official is till now the best way to be able to retain one’s autonomy and honor and to have the freedom any struggle for democracy requires.

The Baradei language is by no means elitist as many who are unable to fathom it claim as they look for an excuse for neither understanding it nor even attempting to listen to it let alone learn about its rules. It is only as far-fetched as any altruistic action in the midst of a ruthless fight for as many morsels of the cake as one can get and it too human to be grasped by those who value parliament seats more than they do flesh and blood.

Latin may have become extinct, but it remains the language of some of the world’s earliest masterpieces, the major source of universal scientific terminology, and the epitome of hard-earned knowledge and a sophisticated intellect and nothing can change that. It will go through short phases of renaissance and long eras of demise, yet it will forever stay the topmost aspiration for every scholar and the proof of mastery for every clergyman and the peak of learning for every layman.

The most highly-educated speak Latin and the most truly-patriotic speak Baradei. True, both are difficult to master and hard to maintain, yet both are undoubtedly the fruit of some sincere desire to reach an understanding of a more elevated order that more or less makes you feel complete, secure, and fulfilled.

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/13/188053.html

“We do not sell Danish products” did at one time become the title of a free of charge marketing campaign almost every major grocery store in Cairo launched following the cartoons that infuriated the entire Muslim world. Whoever ran those places needed not be geniuses to realize that a tombstone-like sign modeled after “those are pearls that were his eyes” that points to that deserted place in the display fridge where Lurpak butter used to shamelessly lie and a little bit of PR about championing the noblest of causes despite forecasts of horrendous losses offered the perfect guarantee of a spectacular sales hike. Very few were bothered to think that nobody would have thought of buying the butter and its fellow blasphemous products at the time anyway, hence transferring them to another fridge until the storm passes was not by any means going to bring the least of financial mishap and that manipulating public emotions to get commercial gains is Marketing 101 in any capital-oriented society.

I totally believe in boycotting as a peaceful means of protest and I would personally refrain from using the products of a country whose domestic or foreign policies clash in one way or another with my personal principles or political stand, but would certainly not boycott an entire country because I am mad at what one of its citizens did.

Boycotting, like other forms of resistance, is expected to exert pressure on some party believed to be capable of redressing the wrong they have done you or your people or anything you believe in. But how were the people who embarked on a frantic investigation of the origins of all cheese and biscuit brands that have Scandinavian-looking names expecting that they or their faith would be avenged? Did they actually believe that the cartoonist would be arrested and beaten up in the police station until he tells on the intelligence agency that hired him to destroy Islam? Or that perhaps he would turn out to be the mastermind of a global plot to exterminate Muslims on the planet? I hate it when high hopes go down the drain, but I am sorry to say that I do not sympathize with those who lack the slightest ability to distinguish between one culture and another or one system of government and its exact opposite and who could not arrive at the conclusion that neither consumer boycotts nor flag burnings, embassy attacks, and death threats would send the man to the gallows.

We can have an endless debate about whether the cartoons were provocative or racist and whether it was insensitive of the cartoonist to be totally indifferent to the feelings of a billion people and whether real art is not that which nourishes on demonizing the “other.” What I see as indisputable is the man’s absolute freedom to do what he pleases as long as he did not violate any law in the country of which he is citizen and especially if the culture to which he belongs views this act as a normal practice of the freedom of expression this same country and a whole bunch of international charters granted him. But relativity is not a legitimate theory in our part of the world and for some strange reason we believe that whatever is sacred for us has to be so for the rest of the world and that every human being on the face of earth should make sure he or she is not hurting us before thinking of laying down a single brush stroke. That explains why we cannot come to terms with the fact that “deriding Islam” is not the most heinous of crimes across the world and that the culprit was able to get away with it.

Shortly after, the cartoon crisis was over. The butter returned, but the grudge remained. The mortified vulture licked its wounds and waited for the coming prey while bearing in mind that it better be edible this time. Well, looks like it is … perfectly so!

There is a cartoon involved, but the crime looks a lot different for many reasons. This time, the identity of the cartoonist is unknown, and will most probably remain so under the circumstances, and the culprit is basically guilty of posting it on the internet. This time, the figures depicted in the cartoon do not, as far I know, hold any special status in Islam but are, as far as people say, endowed with Islamic traits and that is how a bearded Mickey and a face-veiled Minnie derided Islam. It didn’t stop at this! The offense was rendered all the more criminal by the offender’s objections to mixing politics with religion and his view of the veil as a social phenomenon rather than a religious duty.

By the way, what the man did is quite insignificant, for it is apparently nothing compared to insulting none other than the prophet himself. It is rather who he is that makes all the difference, for this is what makes of him the most perfect of all preys. He is Christian and this in itself is proof enough that deriding Islam is what he does for a living. He is one of the richest and most known businessmen in Egypt and this makes tarnishing his image quite destructive on both the personal and the financial levels. He is the founder of a quite influential liberal party in post-revolution Egypt and this renders questioning his values detrimental to all political powers that subscribe to the same line of thought. There remains the most important ingredient in this recipe of the most delicious catch: the man is within reach, easy to get back at, and definitely prosecutable! Filing a lawsuit was as much of a piece of cake as the mobilization of the majority against a member of the minority is. In no time, the man was turned from a victim of a rising tide of religious fanaticism and a society that views freedom of speech as a deadly sin into a menace to national identity and an enemy of the state.

And because he is not Kurt Westergaard’s compatriot, he does not have the luxury of sitting back and resting assured that he is part of a system that will fight with all its might against any infringement on his basic rights. He, therefore, ended up in the exact position in which his fundamentalist detractors wanted to corner him and where he is to forced account for all the “crimes” committed by others who were lucky enough to be born in Denmark or any spot in the world that is capable of rescuing its citizens from those lethal claws that have by now mastered the art of prey selection.

Vultures do not necessarily derive their predatory powers from the speed with which they seize their prey or from this prey’s inability to detect imminent danger or escape sudden attacks, but more from the environment in which they thrive and which either nourishes their thirst for blood or teaches them that not all that moves is food. No laws govern the open wilderness and only God knows how many members of the species needs to perish in order for the rest to be listed as endangered.

http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/06/186642.html

Making a list of resolutions never means you are resolute to do any of them and wishing yourself or others a happy new year never means you have a good reason to believe there is any happiness looming in the horizon. In fact, the resolutions and the new year in which they supposed to be put into action are one and the same thing. The decisions we make at the end of the departing year are our idea of what could make the coming one “happy.” I believe that is exactly why we engage in an activity that proves futile almost 99 percent of the time: to feel good about ourselves and the future and to resist admitting defeat for trying and failing to do the same bunch of things over the past decade or so.

How many times have you said or heard the phrase “as of next year” preceded by some grievance and followed by some solemn vow? How far did you manage to go on a diet if half your clothes don’t fit, to hit the gym every morning if you gasp for breath every time you climb a couple of stairs, to stop yelling at your kids if every time you overhear them talking about you the word “crazy” has to pop up, to follow the instructions in “Why Men Love Bitches” if your boyfriend is taking you for granted, to quit smoking if your blood pressure is hitting lethal levels, or to start admitting that women also wear pants if your wife announces she is no longer taking your chauvinist gibberish?

The level of challenge posed by these resolutions vary and so does the willpower of the people who make them, yet one fact remains the same: comfort zones are not called as such because they are technically comfortable, but rather because getting out of them is uncomfortable. That is why most people would rather stick to lousy old habits than make the extra effort of acquiring healthy new ones and would rather keep feeling bad where they are than try feeling good in a different place. And that is how the “resolutions” is emptied of any meaning and that is also how “wishes” sounds like the most logical substitute. Being the down-to-earth person I am and realizing that a failed resolution is much more traumatic than a wish not coming true, I stopped using the first since I was in high school and started investing all my energy in the second.

A few minutes before 2010 came to an end, exactly the time when I am usually hit by that barrage of wishes for the coming year, I found out that I only had just one that summed up almost everything I felt at the moment on both the personal and the public levels and that sounded too complex it had to stand alone.

“I want to be a citizen of a democracy,” I whispered to myself as I fixed my gaze on the dial getting closer to 12.

“Oh! I have never had a wish come true that fast,” I said not a long time after as if to the genie who had just granted it, while struggling to fathom how on earth can weight loss resolutions fail that miserably and revolution wishes happen that gloriously. I remembered those cheesy “Eat Pray Love” kind of books where the power of a plea is determined by how many people share it and where you immediately summon the image of a group therapy session with people repeating some tedious mantra while holding each others’ hands and where your only reaction is always “Duh!” But who knows, I wondered, maybe it really works. Maybe a few other millions made the same wish at the same time and maybe the emotion each one of us vented into his or her wish was intense enough to make it come true and genuine enough to transform itself into a resolution.

Based on this assumption and regardless of how dreamy or ridiculous it might be, I decided in the last moments of 2011 to reenact the same pseudo-hypnotic ceremony in the hope that fellow supplicants from last time will be there again for a second round of sweeping resolutions.

– I want all remnants of the former regime to rot in jail
– I want all revolution hijackers to disappear
– I want the army back where it came from
– I want the police to do what it is supposed to do
– I want no more talk of religion in politics
– I want to stop hearing disparaging remarks about women
– I want to stop hearing discriminatory nonsense against Copts
– I want people to know that votes are too priceless to be sold … or bought
– I want human rights classes in every single elementary school across the country
– I want every Egyptian to be able to distinguish between Arabic and Mandarin Chinese
– I want all Egyptians to look up the words “secular,” “liberal,” “civil,” and “socialist” in a beginner’s dictionary
– I want the dignity of the Egyptian citizen to be the first article in the constitution
– I want members of parliament who do not think it is a musical chairs game
– I want a president who feared not to be a dissent at the time when it was life threatening
– I want a government that supports the Palestinian cause
– I want a people who know what they deserve and are willing to fight for it
– I want no more black strapped photographs of Egypt’s bravest youths
– I want the Egyptian revolution to go down in history as the noblest and most peaceful of all time

I know the list maybe a little bit longer than last year’s, but I and my partners in “wanting” have become too demanding and too confident … and rightly so! But I made sure I started earlier so that I would be done by the time it struck 12. I hope they did the same.

I finished, took a deep breath, and heard the midnight strokes then saw millions of crossed fingers starting a countdown for Egypt as we all want it … happy and new.

http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2011/12/30/185330.html

One photograph I saw more than 10 years ago made me learn what I have since then considered an essential fact of life, one that I now appreciate more than ever. The photograph was of an Israeli soldier hiding inside the hatch of his tank, ostensibly to dodge the stone hurled at him by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy. Had this spectacle been staged for the sake of delivering this message, it wouldn’t have done that so perfectly. The courage you display in attacking your opponents does not necessarily mean they are weaker than you are and the fear your opponents display in defending themselves against you does not necessarily mean you are stronger than they are. This little shot can easily answer all the questions that have been raised since the release of activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah starting from the analytical “What makes anyone afraid of Alaa Abdel Fattah?” through the reflective “Who is afraid of Alaa Abdel Fattah?” to the naïve “Is anyone afraid of Alaa Abdel Fattah?”

Both the arrest and the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah were acts of fear and assuming otherwise would, I believe, mean underestimating his impact and overestimating the intelligence of his captors/releasers.

Alaa Abdel Fattah was arrested at a time when someone as well-known and as politically active as he is was badly needed to provide the proper distraction from the abominable crime of crushing unarmed protestors beneath the wheels of armored vehicles and when the Higher Council for the Armed forces needed to figure out what could be done to embellish that ugly face it was too quick to expose. Those two main objectives addressed two different types of people, for while the first targeted revolutionaries who were sure to raise hell the moment they hear the news, the second was to sooth average Egyptians who might see the army justified in its violent repression of a group of angry protestors who were out to undermine the state. In both cases, a revolutionary, and a prominent one for that matter, was the answer owning to his political and national value for the first group and the way he would come to represent all revolutionary youths for the second group. It quite worked!
Revolutionaries and activists in Egypt were joined by international groups and Western media to condemn the relapse of a revolution that erupted to topple a dictatorship into a different form of autocracy that again strips citizens of their basic rights. The fact that he was summoned by military prosecution and was to face a military trial endowed this mobilization of Egyptians outraged at the detention of their fellow freedom fighter with a national character as the Free Alaa campaign went hand in hand with the No to Military Trials protests. The charges leveled against Alaa —stealing a military weapon, attacking army officers on duty, damaging military property, and inciting violence against the military council — managed to fool Egyptians following the clashes from home and tuning in to state TV into seeing revolutionaries as saboteurs and believing that the army was in a state of legitimate self-defense. Between this and that, efforts that should have been invested in condemning army brutality and demanding a fast transition of power to a civilian government were channeled towards totally different issues.

Alaa Abdel Fattah was released at a time when the devil tried to force a halo around a pair of fiery horns and was counting in that on the gullible millions who believed mutation is an overnight process. The fast deterioration of the relationship between the army and the people manifested in two spats of bloody clashes that left dozens killed, hundreds injured, and hundreds of thousands appalled as well as worldwide resentment at the audacity of blaming the victims stripped the military council of the last, if any, shreds of credibility as far as siding with the revolution and protecting the revolutionaries are concerned and rendered any mention of the army’s code of honor no less hollow than Mubarak’s talk of reform. Provocative statements army generals made about the incidents only served to put the final repulsive strokes on an already abhorrent image and suffice it to recall the remark made by one of them about the protestors being a bunch of thugs who deserve to perish in Hitler’s gas chambers. Then came the video in which one of the two prosecution witnesses in Alaa’s case accused him and the revolutionaries of a series of crimes that made you think he was talking about some drug cartel in the jungles of Colombia and that made it very obvious what kind of a poorly-performed charade the whole thing was. Some serious PR was obviously needed here. A frantic search for a momentary sedative must have immediately started and must have concluded with a no better solution than setting free the man who was now turning a bigger portion of the population against them as his detention started to sound more and more unjustified even for those who initially believed he was the source of all evil.

Yet, going from one extreme to another is neither wise nor convincing, plus it burns the bridge you can still use if you want cross to the other side once more. Accordingly, Alaa was released but not acquitted. There will still be a trial and only God knows what the verdict would be like. It will most probably depend on how troublesome he will be in the coming stage and how far his freedom/captivity can influence public opinion.

I remember a friend of mine once told me how when her older son did anything wrong and saw some punishment coming his way he would hit his younger brother who would in turn start crying and have the mother running to pacify him while totally forgetting about both the original offence for which the older should have been punished and the subsequent one which was his way of escaping this punishment. However, at times he was stupid enough to overdo it so that it became very hard for the mother to overlook his behavior and very hard for him to escape punishment. Then, he would do his best to be good to his little brother and to show his mother how unfair she was to think of him that way. Yet this was never an eternal truce for the mother still knows what he is capable of and this is what he wants: to remain a latent threat, a time bomb that can go off whenever necessary. This in no way means that he is strong. He is just able to turn his fear of punishment into a well-devised defense strategy that has the flexibility of shifting from extreme aggression to kind-hearted amicability and vice versa depending on the situation.

Like any tyranny that feels insecure about the disconcerting presence of democracy advocates who are immune to the deadliest of threats and resistant to all sorts of power-seeking alliances, the military council is indeed afraid of Alaa Abdel Fattah and is struggling to come up with a formula to approach the likes of him in a way that neither loosens their iron grip nor betrays their fear at opponents that are technically much weaker.

Alaa Abdel Fattah and all revolutionaries, activists, and politicians who toe the same line can realistically-speaking be squashed beneath the tracks of army tanks in a few minutes, but the totally unarmed remain unflinching while their fully geared adversary cowers behind its bastions. There might not be a scientific explanation, but in similar cases a moral one is more than enough although not always commonsensical for all. Those who are able to comprehend this complicated form of power relations would easily understand what it means to have faith in a cause endow you with a strength that not a million arsenals can give you an ounce of.

Look up the photograph that taught me this lesson and you will see where I am coming from!

http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2011/12/23/184127.html

A couple of months ago, an Egyptian young woman decided to strip and decided to have a picture taken of her totally nude except for a pair of black stockings and a pair of red shoes and decided to post this picture on the blog that bears her real name and decided to put up with with whatever consequences such an “outrageous” action might bring.

A couple of days ago, an unidentified Egyptian female protester was stripped of whatever clothes covered her upper body except for a blue bra, was dragged by the arms through Tahrir Square, was beaten by iron clubs, and was kicked in her bare torso.

In a country struggling with the radical repercussions of a life-changing revolution, swamped with political squabbles, crippled by a failing economy, and cornered between the tyranny of the military and the will of the people, it is hard to expect that a naked picture — also at the time when a zillion nude women and all the world’s x-rated content are just a click away — would be noticed and if it was it would not be stopped at for more than a few minutes and if it was it would definitely not become the talk of the town and if it did there was no way the future of the nation and the dignity of the revolution and the sanctity of religion would be all contingent upon the moment the stripping girl decided to take off her clothes. But in Egypt, everything is possible!

In a country where the basic freedoms for which a revolution erupted are being flagrantly violated, where citizens who are exercising their right to peaceful protest are being mercilessly beaten up and killed in cold blood, where women are still the object of systematic bullying and incessant physical and psychological abuse, and where gender equality seems as far-fetched as establishing a true democracy in Egypt, it would sound quite surrealist to overlook the humiliation the stripped girl had been through and focus instead on wearing an outfit which is easy to strip or going to a place in which it is likely to be stripped. But in Egypt, everything is possible!

Apart from the millions of comments her blog received after her nude picture was posted and which only serve to show how a few inches of bare flesh can turn many people’s lives around in our part of the world, the reactions the stripping girl’s move triggered were of epic proportions so that a few days into the commotion almost the entire population knew beyond doubt that she was part of a cosmic plan to bring down social values, compromise the Islamic faith, undermine Egypt’s national security, and abort the January 25 Revolution. The first two were quite expected, for after all she decided to take off all her clothes in a country where hair is the new genitalia so she would have been really delusional had she thought more than 15 out of the 80 million would support her. The last two are as striking as the evidence that supports them. After the fierce campaign launched against the girl, a group of Israeli women decided to have a nude photo of themselves taken and posted all over the media in solidarity with their Egyptian “sister.” That was it! In no time, she was crowned a sneaky Zionist and a threat to Egyptian sovereignty. At the same time, she was reported to belong to a famous youth movement known for its role in the revolution. Falling into this trap, the movement was quick to announce that it would never accept members who engage in such “indecent” actions and was quicker to accuse her of tarnishing the image of the revolution and slandering the revolutionaries. That was also it! In no time, she was crowned the architect of the counter-revolution.

Apart from the indignation of a few thousand Egyptian women who organized a massive rally to slam the army’s brutality and the condemnation statements by dozens of activists and politicians who called for putting military leaders on trial, the reactions of the majority of Egyptians to the stripped girl’s abuse were shockingly apathetic and even disparaging. Why would any respectable girl put herself in a situation where she is harassed or beaten up? This is what happens to women who leave their homes and do men’s work. How could she be wearing something that can easily be taken off and with nothing underneath? This means she did not care if her body was exposed. And how come she’s not wearing layers in this weather? She must have staged the whole thing then. Is she really veiled or face-veiled? Most probably not. She and those behind her must have spread this rumor to gain sympathy from a predominately-religious society. That was it! In no time, she was robbed of the few rights a victim status entitles and became her own stripper, abuser, and beater.

None of the conspiracy theories hinted at the reason the stripping girl herself stated for doing so and which was made clear in the statement she wrote under the picture about the objectification of women, obsession with sex in male-oriented societies, and equating art with apostasy. But how can we expect otherwise? Will a girl who takes off her clothes be capable of telling the truth? Of course not! Therefore, it goes without saying that her own explanation is nothing but a cover up for her devilish intentions. It also goes without saying that with the clothes she shed, her rights as a human being are automatically annulled so it is not a problem if she is beaten up in Tahrir Square where she makes an appearance in one of the protests following the posting of the picture and it is perfectly alright if she receives death threats.

None of the ruthless judgments took into consideration the real reason for the stripped girl’s presence at the crime scene. The fact that she was in a place where Egyptians were defending the right to protest and protecting the gains of their revolution and that she risked her safety and her life for such a noble cause is totally overlooked and so is the fact that, as a human being, she was humiliated, beaten, and deprived of her citizenship by the institution in charge of making sure none of this happens. It also seemed insignificant for everyone who declared war against her that had she been less lucky, she might have joined the martyrs to which all of us owe the gift of freedom. Or is martyrdom a men-only designation? Add to this the way the testimony of another female revolutionary, and which I vehemently object to in principle, that her friend the stripped girl was, in fact wearing a jumper under the outer loose garment and which was also taken off.

I am confused here! Are the bodies of Egyptian women that precious or that cheap? Does parting with one’s clothes imply a flagrant violation of all morals known to humanity on a personal blog and an en passant occurrence in a public square and all media outlets?

I have no idea what the girl in the blue bra thinks of the girl in the red shoes or vice versa and I am not sure if they realize the similarity between the two of them, but that is not important to know at the moment. What is certain is that both were involved in an act of stripping, one in the active voice and the other in the passive, and that both expose a nauseating hypocrisy in a patriarchal society that obsesses with how much control it can exercise over women’s bodies and with having the exclusive right to undress and cover it as it pleases, a society in which a woman has no power to take clothes off her own body or to complain if those clothes were taken off by a second party against her will.

Maybe I shouldn’t be confused after all. It is much simpler than all those analyses I am tiring myself with. It is not about the value of a woman’s body whether in terms of her freedom to do whatever she wants with it or her right to protect it against invasion. It is about women being the timeless offenders and the source of all vice whether they are the subject or the object. And why am I surprised?

Isn’t this the same logic that blames raped women for seducing their rapists by their sheer existence on the face of earth?

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/16/182862.html

Mention the word “communism” and take a quick look at the variety of reactions it triggers and try to see if any of them is in any way positive. Bear in mind that I am not talking about the United States, the birthplace of the Red Scare and the hotbed of all they-are-out-to-destroy-us theories; nor am I talking about any of the Eastern Bloc countries that were repressed, impoverished, and turned into vassal states because of Communism. I am talking about Egypt, a country whose only link with communism was a strategic alliance with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and which wasn’t manifested in a lot more than scholarships to Moscow universities and a medal of honor Khrushchev awarded to Nasser, besides a couple of political parties that never really got the chance to make the difference they aspired to.

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/11/29/179926.html

How I managed to get over that overwhelming antipathy to the unjustified determination to hold a democratic procedure in circumstances that I personally saw as flagrantly undemocratic remains a mystery to me till this very moment. This aversion to a long-awaited process for which a revolution erupted and a decades-old regime was ousted would sound outrageous in normal times, and for the majority of those watching Egypt while huddled under velvety blankets that provide perfect shelter from both the cold and the truth, yet it feels so natural for those who forfeited the comfort of their warm beds and ventured into the battlefield that was Tahrir Square. I, for one, believe in pyramids and I think Abraham Maslow would have become one of history’s lunatics had he placed self-actualization at the bottom and basic needs at the top, for anyone can see how impossible it is to think of professional career or intellectual development when you have no access to food and shelter. Similarly, I found it highly nonsensical to give citizens the right to choose their representatives in parliament while robbing them of their human dignity, and at times their lives, to engage in a practice in the absence of the essence upon which it is supposed to be based.

The fact remained that elections were to take place a few hours later and I, like many disgruntled Egyptians, had one of two choices: boycott altogether as a statement against a hollow formality that does not by any means mirror a parallel transformation in human and citizenship rights or spoil the vote through writing the one phrase that has been echoing in Tahrir for the past 10 days: “Down with military rule.” I was never in favor of the second option, not because I didn’t want the army to return to where they came from and leave us in peace, not because I didn’t realize how tempting it is to show the military council the exact number of Egyptians who want to do away with them, but rather owing to my conviction that if squares are for protesting then ballots are for choosing and I would rather not mix this with that. On the eve of the elections, I gave in to physical and mental exhaustion and left the demons that I had constantly tried and failed to exorcize to lead me through a turbulent night in which my principles were put to the test and after which I was certain that while people would be flocking to polling stations, I would be nibbling on popcorn and watching Hangover- Part II.

The first morning light saw me hopping out of bed like a school kid late for the bus and to my surprise I found myself totally braced up for whatever action that will chart Egypt’s future and totally rid of any guilt trip that I expected to accompany such a decision. In some mysterious way, I made peace with myself. Fighting on two fronts enhances the chances of winning, I seemed to have been repeating all night or maybe my demons decided to give me and themselves a break before moving on to the next battle. So off I went.

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/11/24/179031.html

With a congested nose, a sore throat, a short breath, a pulsating head, and an excruciating pain in every single muscle in my body, I listen to the Field Marshal explain why he made me go back home semi-paralyzed. You owe me an explanation, I think, and you better come up with a good one even though nothing I can think of might justify what you did to me. Even if I am naïve enough to believe whatever excuses you are about to fool me with, let me remind you that I am not alone. In fact, how I feel towards you might only be a fraction of the grudge —that is the most euphemistic term I can think of at the moment — that is building up inside everyone you hurt in one way or another. After all, I am still alive and have not so far been permanently deformed by one of your bullets.