Category: Letter from Cairo

I was almost a child when first I heard the words “military trial.” My cousin, about 15 years my senior, was telling us at a family gathering how devastated he was because in a few days he was supposed to start his military service, which is compulsory in Egypt except for men who have no male siblings, and how it would have been less painful to be detained in a mental asylum than to stand army life for almost a whole year.

I remember how difficult it was for me to see where the problem was. “Just don’t go,” I said, and gave him that “couldn’t you figure this out on your own?” face.

I was sure he wanted to slap me, but looked like he was rehearsing some barracks-like discipline, so he just let out a scornful smile and said, “And face a military trial, right?”

I shrugged, part ashamed after hearing everyone laugh at my stupidity and part curious about this type of punishment that seemed much more formidable than being deprived of your daily intake of Tom and Jerry. However, the first overcame the second and my pride overcame both, so I didn’t ask what that meant.

A while later I saw a movie in which an army commander asked a soldier to shoot on something or someone and apparently the soldier did not want to, possibly because he had ethical issues with the war or something of that sort.

After an excruciatingly long scene in which we get to live the conflict he was undergoing, the principled soldier laid down his weapon and a moment later was arrested by fellow fighters on the commander’s order. The accompanying sound effects and the expression on the arrested soldier’s face made me realize some serious punishment was awaiting him, and from the trial that followed I learnt that his crime is called “insubordination,” not that that meant anything for me at the time, and that this is a serious violation of army laws, since officers are expected to obey the orders given by commanders.

Putting one piece of information next to another, I gathered that a military trial is some kind of penalty imposed by army people against other army people for some kind of offense related to the army and which is judged according to laws pertaining only to the army.

In addition to beginning to sympathize with my conscripted cousin, I was intrigued by the way the military was treated as a different species, with a separate set of laws that do not apply to “normal” people; you definitely don’t stand trial if your father decides you’re grounded and you decide you’re going out — well, not until now, at least!

The same goes for running away from an angry dog, deciding to break up with your girlfriend, or snapping at your demanding boss.

In the army, these offenses are called “cowardice,” “desertion,” and “contempt,” and no wise officer would want to surrender to the enemy while under orders not to, abandon his post without permission, or call his commander a son of a bitch.

Regardless of how shocked I was to see how army officers are not treated as human beings, people susceptible to all kinds of weaknesses and prone to all sorts of mistakes, I once read an analysis that explained to me – without convincing me, however – why what seems commonplace for civilians can be a fatal crime in the military: the vast difference between civilian and military lifestyles explains the equally vast difference between the guidelines according to which each of them is governed.

I can’t say that this exactly fair, but it isn’t totally devoid of commonsense, for when you come to think of it, military mistakes can change the fate of entire nations or turn an imminent victory into a shameful defeat.

When, after the January 25 Revolution, calls for trying Mubarak and his family and members of the former regime in a military court gained momentum, the Higher Council for the Armed Forces decided that as part of being the civilized country we are aspiring to be we should grant the former president and his henchmen all the rights to which a civilian defendant is entitled – including the right to defense and the right to appeal – even as aware as we were of their horrible crimes and which could, in fact, be much worse than any of those listed in the military code.

I kind of agreed, because even though Mubarak was a military man, the crimes for which he is tried are civilian ones that he committed against civilian Egyptians, and since the rest of the gang were civilian, too, then that looked like the most reasonable approach.

But, of course, this should not be the case all the time, since, as we all know by now, there are certain crimes that might not be committed by a member of the military nor within a military context, yet are far more dangerous than making your country fall in the hands of the enemy because you decided to chicken out at the last minute or disobeying an order that might have won your army the war or quitting at the time when the dignity of your country is contingent upon the likes of you.

Here’s the newest addition to the military offenses that jeopardize the stability of the nation and compromise its sovereignty: “tweeting.”

The crime of tweeting, usually committed by a group of outlaws referred to as “activists” or “bloggers” and now “revolutionaries,” revolves around the offense of voicing your objection to the performance of your military rulers owing to the similarities you are gradually detecting between them and a former regime you paid a very dear price to get rid of and to the provocative slowness with which justice is taking its course in a country in which a revolution had just happened to put an end to tyranny and oppression and to your ability to predict the grave consequences that are bound to happen if things remain the way they are.

The crime of tweeting has destructive repercussions, for it spreads chaos, incites violence, and calls for mutiny. It doesn’t stop at that, though, for sometimes it even involves engaging in acts of blasphemy, such as defaming a group of people who, we just got to know a couple of days ago, are untouchable and infallible.

Well, if a post of 140 characters has now become the noose we tighten around our necks, let us all gasp our last breath rather than see Egypt go back to the time when we were slaves and they were gods. The Dark Ages are over and you are no longer in possession of our one-way ticket to heaven, so keep your indulgences and leave us our country or kill us all and rule over a wasteland inhabited by the ghosts of martyrs who will never give you a moment of peace!

Sail across the Atlantic and set anchor in north east of Africa and you will find an utterly different scenario. You are not only faced with all the above-mentioned “misdemeanors” with almost every step you take, but you also become the “culprit” in case, God forbid, you might expect an apology and anyway if you decide to be realistic you will never seek one partly because having it granted is next to impossible and partly because you are smart enough to learn that what is a misconduct in one country can be part of the daily routine of another country. You come to realize that those things people apologize for over there are too trivial to be noticed right here and in fact become by time unnoticed as they are forcefully overpowered by a whole plethora of other much more “violating” actions that, surprise, you also never get an apology for.

You can be hit in the back with a grocery store cart by someone who for some odd reason decided he has to reach the breakfast cereal aisle in half a second; you can feel a heavy foot that carries the weight of a 100 plus kilograms step on yours then a moment after you see its owner walking away and never looking back; you can see a car deciding to speed up the moment you cross the street and after divine intervention the driver looks at you scornfully either because he regrets not killing you or because you got on his or her nerves by deciding to be there at the time when he was in no mood for stopping; you can be leveled to the ground by a passenger who wants to catch a train last minute and is resolved to crush any obstacles in the way. These are just a few instances. Getting to know the whole list requires that you come and stay in Cairo for a couple of days, yet for the time being these should be enough to offer you some of the most exemplary highlights.

Anybody who is not a citizen of the so-called “third world” will assume that we live in a jungle and that each one of us goes out in the morning thinking about how much blood is out there to spill. I am sorry to disappoint them, but this is not what it actually is. Egyptians are not violent by nature and like any civilization born by the banks of a river, they have always been a pleasant people and this is how they had been perceived by all sorts of outsiders regardless of the reason for their presence in the country. It is only recently that they have started displaying a hostile behavior that is not directed towards a specific target, for it is not necessarily related to anything they see as their source of misery, but rather seems to be sprayed indiscriminately at anything that stands in their way. This is not only demonstrated in their reluctance to apologize upon committing any social faux pas, but also in the pleasure they usually take in not doing so and the resentment they make no effort to hide in case you happen to expect an apology.

For years—centuries and millennia in fact—Egyptians had been an oppressed people. They had never actually gotten a proper chance to choose who governs them and, with the exception of a few sporadic uprisings that had no substantial impact, were hardly able to effect a change to this status. However, within the past 30 years, the country had been in the grip of the worst of its dictators. Oppression as well as feeling the brunt of it had reached unprecedented heights and that was when they gave up the amicable qualities for which they had been renowned possibly as they realized that friendliness is the luxury of the dignified and that the abused cannot be blamed for doing otherwise. As part of this new improvised and rather unconscious ideology, the adherence to which grew more adamant the uglier the face of the regime turned to be, they decided they owe no one any sort of apology and realized that they indeed are the ones who deserve one. It didn’t matter if that apology was indeed required and if they had done some wrong that made it necessary; you might as well have grown feathers while waiting to hear the “sorry” you want.

Before January 25, if anyone had told me that more than one million Egyptians will be packed in a place where you can hardly move or breathe and you would still hear “sorry” when one shoulder brushes against another or if one foot is about to step on another, I would have just laughed till I was out of breath in the same manner as if another someone had told me the regime was oust-able. Yet, this indeed happened. At the time when you expected a massacre any minute, you got apologies for things that might have mattered at the grocery store, yet had no significance whatsoever in Tahrir Square. I personally only realized my foot was stepped on or my shoulder was brushed against after I heard the apology and after I stared in disbelief for a few moments at the person who made it. I thought it was a coincidence, but it was not, and for 18 days I kept counting the “sorry”s I got and was seized by a strong desire to immortalize every moment I heard one and with every “transgression” on the part of my fellow protestors, I felt like celebrating the return of the Egyptian even before knowing that the revolution will bear fruit.

Please don’t get me wrong and assume that the word “sorry” is now going hand in hand with “good morning”—not that the last had not for a while been frequently skipped anyway—because with the president’s resignation and after the entire population rocked the country with cheers about freedom and democracy, it was “finita la musica, passata la fiesta” time and everyone went back home leaving behind that dream-like era when sorry seemed to be the easiest word.

That was indeed quite baffling. It turned out that Egyptians did not have the apology center in their brain surgically removed or irreversibly damaged. They just use it selectively, when they see fit that is, and for some unknown reason, they don’t see it fit at the moment. Well, the reason is not that unknown, for apparently they are now going by the Arabic epigram that you can’t give something you lack and apparently the consecutive disappointments Egyptians have been getting since the fall of the regime are making them feel once again robbed of that restored dignity that made them feel willing to apologize simply because this was preceded by a feeling that they have received their long-awaited apology. Freedom turns you into the gentlest of philanthropists and oppression creates of you a beastly misanthropist!

I will consider this a little message to the Higher Council of the Armed Forces and to any official and/or institute currently in charge of charting the course of the new Egypt: You are also assigned the mission of making Egyptians say “sorry” when they mess up. No, that’s not a stupid gesture we can live without; that is how people learn to respect the sanctity of their fellow human beings’ territory and that is how we become a nation at peace with itself.

Looking at the way Mubarak is depicted makes one realize that the decadence with which the face is afflicted is obviously not due to a defacement attempt like the ones to which several pharaohs were subjected at the hands of their successors – Akhenaten being the most vivid example. The cracks seem naturally induced rather than externally inflicted, which conveys the artist’s belief that the regime carried within it the seeds of its destruction and that the inner rottenness was starting to transpire outwards. Each of these cracks can be seen as an epitome of the various aspects of tyranny and corruption that plagued Egypt during Mubarak’s reign – the emergency law, torture to death in police stations, persecution of freedom writers, plundering the resources of the country, the bequest of power, and the list goes on forever. Some cracks are deeper than others, not because some of Mubarak’s crimes were more forgivable or less damaging, but possibly because some played a more crucial role than others in bringing about the annihilation of the regime. The fissure –quite a deep hole – in the nose is the most obvious not only by virtue of being the biggest but also for its location right in the middle of the face, an indication that the regime had received an outright blow that is likely to turn fatal. In fact, it is from this position that one gets to feel that the whole face is about to collapse. Few remnants of the past haughtiness can still be traced amid the wrinkle-like cracks that are obviously struggling to hide the overtly conspicuous signs of rapid aging and crippling frailty. Mubarak is still lifting his head up high in an attempt to maintain the “I am above all” posture that had kept intensifying with every year he spent in power. In another display of the unrelenting intransigence for which he had been known, Mubarak was trying to escape the inescapable through a semblance of strength that ran contrary to the truth on the ground. However, all signs of life have been washed off the once vibrant eyes so that the face is stripped of its human attributes as it turns into that of a corpse ready for the mummification that precedes the trip towards the illusory eternity. The absence of an eye pupil and the flatness of the surface of the eye can also suggest blindness not in the sense that it can no longer detect the light, but rather demonstrating an absolute lack of vision as far as the wellbeing of the country and the imminence of his end are concerned. With an ego-centrism that bordered megalomania, Mubarak was unable to see outside himself, so he neither gave himself the chance to contemplate the disastrous impact of his rule on Egypt nor to foresee the abyss towards which he was walking with steady steps. The eyes also look as if they had been gouged a la Oedipus, which implies an act of violence that induced a fast and eternal plunge into pitch-black darkness. Mubarak had indeed chosen to blind himself in an act that he assumed would shelter him from anything he perceived as a threat. Little did he know that this same self-imposed blindness would play a decisive role in speeding up his downfall as overdue as it had already been. The stiff upper lip, which according to body language studies conveys restraint and an attempt to maintain dignity in the middle of a mortifying situation, serve to intensify the exertion of an arduous effort to sail against the tides and resume the charade till the end. The continuous strain which his lips had undergone had over time formed the longest and most branched of the cracks, thus creating another weak spot from which the face might disintegrate, especially that this multiple crack had crept to the neck and was likely to extend to the entire body. The yellowish map in the background is typical of history books depicting conquests in ancient times by emperors who expand their reign across continents and assert their power through the subjugation of as many territories as possible. Even though Mubarak had no conquests in the proper sense of the word, he was the tyrannical colonizer of his own people and the conqueror of a land that resisted his presence as much as it did that of a foreign invader. While such maps might have been hung in royal courts as a source of pride, they are in this context a symbol of the shame Mubarak has brought to Egypt through ruling it by force, taking its people captive, and effecting an unequalled destruction upon both. Like the maps of an ancient era in which occupation was commonplace, Mubarak was soon to become history and like every colonizer he was bound to be kicked out from a land that yearned for freedom. One can see that the right side is starting to fold, hence heralding a turning of this page and the beginning of another. When Muhammad Labib first showed me this artwork at the end of 2010, I asked him, “What possessed you to do this?” He was silent for a few seconds as if desperately seeking a logical explanation for a purely artistic impulse that requires none. “The man’s days are numbered,” he said. “I know it.” I was thrilled, yet felt a chill run down my spine. I so much hoped this will prove true, yet was unable to figure out how and was terrified at the price this might entail. I smiled with a little bit of apprehension and said, “Fingers crossed!” A month later, we were both marching side by side among hundreds of Egyptians that grew into thousands then millions, all screaming at the top of their lungs, “The people demand the fall of the regime!” and “Down with Hosni Mubarak!” Eighteen days later, the cracks had already spread all over the ailing body and in a moment that changed the face of history, the colossal bulk crumbled into a heap of dust at the feet of the brave Egyptians who then realized that the blood of their compatriots had not been shed in vain. The newly-liberated freedom fighters flung away the remaining particles and as they saw the wind carry them away into eternal oblivion, they finally bid farewell to the era of the pharaohs. * Both article and artwork were displayed at the exhibition Voices from the Levant (July 7- July 22, 2011) in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

At the time when I got that book, I had read before about the French and the Bolshevik revolutions and I was aware that in both the noble cause and the quest for justice were marred by the amount of lives that were taken in the process and the bone-chilling eras that followed. However, placing those two events that are supposed to have changed the face history in a collection whose main focus is crimes against humanity made me look at the two revolutions from a very different perspective and suddenly I realized that, to me, the achievements they made may in many cases look much less than the horrendous acts they were engaged in, and that made me wonder if a revolution can really be self-destructive so that by time its name becomes associated with repression rather than freedom and bloodshed rather than lifesaving. Apparently so!

When the Egyptian revolution started, I was pleasantly startled to see that while we were all screaming at the top of our lungs that the regime has to go and while we were brimming with anger at decades of oppression and injustice, it was a 100% peaceful, unarmed protest and any spilt blood or lost lives was the doing of the security forces that were out to crush the rebellion by any possible, or impossible, means. Even at the times when protestors were attacked by swords and Molotov cocktails, they responded with stones and the whole world was left wondering about this uprising that has not yet been defined in history, one that amputates without shedding a drop of blood. The word “selmeya,” Arabic for peaceful, made headlines and became the slogan the world chose to single out this unprecedented species of rage that changed the meaning of a word commonly associated with rampant violence and countless casualties.

It comes naturally, therefore, that any discourse which contradicts this spirit would sound alarming even though it might make sense for other people. The ouster of the regime was done peacefully on the part of the protestors but as for the other party that would have gladly drowned the country in a blood bath had they been given the proper chance and enough time, scores were yet to be settled. A kind of communal vendetta ensued between the people who took part in or supported the revolution, not to mention had loved ones killed in the demonstrations, on one hand and the security forces involved in shooting at unarmed civilians and all former regime officials on the other hand. The revolutionaries made it very clear that ousting Mubarak was never the ultimate goal of the revolution, which will never be complete until all criminals are brought to justice whether for what they did during the protests or throughout the past three decades. This is an absolutely legitimate and indisputable demand and up till that point there was no problem.

The problem started when a comparison was made between the 18 days that took Egyptians to unseat a thirty-year-old dictatorship and the endless time it seems to be taking the government or the military or the judiciary or whoever is responsible to put all the culprits, on top of whom is the former president, behind bars. The outrage stirred by the delays was not only due to incompetence on the part of the relevant bodies as far as the purging process that is to rid the country of all “remnants” of the former regime is concerned and not only because of the innumerable conspiracy theories that started emerging about deals struck and money paid… etc., but also because the matter involved one of the most sensitive issues: the martyrs of the revolution.

The fact that the killers of protestors are still at large and some of them were even arrested then released amid rumors of attempts by several policemen to bribe the families of the deceased is considered an outright treason to the revolution and to the value of the blood that was spilt for it, says the revolutionaries. I can’t agree more. It is the rhetoric that followed later that I have a problem with. Ask yourself a very simple question: When the law does not bring you back what is inarguably your right, what do you do? One of two things: Some give up and others take the law into their hands. The second option sounds logical to all those who had loved ones murdered in cold blood by the security forces and who know both they and the deceased will never see a day of peace until they are properly avenged.

It is at this point that words which echo the horror of previous revolutions start coming to the surface. “I would kill those who killed my son with my own hands if the court doesn’t do so.” “The policeman who killed my brother has to be executed right here at the same place where he fired at him.” “All of them should hang in public so that everyone watches justice being served.” “Let all the executions take place in Tahrir.” There was even one incident last week when a man tried to disrupt a protest and actually fired a couple of shots in the air was about to be “executed”—that was the word the media used—by the protestors hadn’t it not been for the immediate intervention of the army. “Yes,” many people said. “He was about to shoot at them and they have the right to kill him.”

That reminded me of the first time I read Charles Dickens’ masterpiece A Tale of Two Cities and of how confused I was by the character of Madame Defarge who seeks a noble end through all the wrong means. I never miss any chance to declare my staunch objection to the capital punishment, which you now see on a whole lot of placards and hear in several protests, yet if this is how it is then there is nothing to do about except look for ways to tone down the new language that implies it will soon be the right of every citizen to inflict that punishment upon whoever he or she perceives as guilty of some crime or another. Doing that does not by any means entail blaming the potential vigilantes for a reaction typical of any human being that had undergone a similar tragedy for they have not taken this stance except after giving up on courts and trials and anything related to that law that proved unable to grant them the only solace they have left—seeing the murderers of their folks receive their due punishment.

It is the problem of those who are responsible for making sure this law is properly implemented—be that the Interior Ministry, the Higher Council of the Armed Forces, criminal or military courts, I don’t care—and bearing in mind that the slower they go, the more salt they are rubbing into the wounds of Egyptians—all of them and not just the ones who had a personal loss.

This is not just about the necessity of having each and every person who dared kill or injure a fellow Egyptian pay dearly for such an unforgivable offence, as important as that is. This is also about preserving the purity of a revolution that, I would say, put Gandhi to practice and gave an outstanding example of the miracles civil disobedience can do. We are a people whose only weapon was their love for their country and their determination to see it free and let us remain so.

Tahrir is no another Bastille and will never be and in the January 25 Revolution there is no place for guillotines and no summary shootings of Tsars. There is and will always be the slogan that begs to remain: “selmeya.”

“We’re next,” one of my friends told me right after the two states were officially separated. My heart sank when he said that. I starred at him apparently in a way that quite shocked him since he assumed what he was saying was not news for me. “What? Why are you looking at me as if I am some delusional jerk? Yes, if things remain the way they are in Egypt, Copts would want their own state and I wouldn’t blame them one bit.” Seeing the effect of his scary predictions on my face, he decided to start joking about it assuming this will being a little bit of comic relief. “Why are you upset? You can go live there by the way since this will be the only place in Egypt where women can walk around with their hair visible.” He actually made things worse.

As sad as this prediction made me and as appalled as I was by the possibility of such escalation, I don’t know why this was not really the cause of my apprehension maybe because at this point I was not thinking in terms of religions and/or ethnicity and I don’t think this was the only problem of the South Sudanese and maybe because for me Copts are the original Egyptians and we all came later. Maybe I was thinking more in terms of parts susceptible to separation not only by virtue of geographical location, but also by historical precedence.

I was not yet born when the Sinai Peninsula was seized and occupied by Israel in 1967 nor when the 1973 war paved the way for regaining it, and I was too little to know what a peace treaty meant when Egypt and Israel signed one in 1979, but I was starting to become aware of what was going in 1982 when Sinai was fully back to Egypt. The celebrations that swept the country at the time alerted me to the value of the peninsula for all Egyptians and made me develop some kind of an emotional attachment to it before I had even set foot there and when I did I remember how I cried with joy at the first sight of that land that for several years has, captured or liberated, acquired such epic proportions. The euphoria of victory was later followed by the craze of beaches, safari trips, and diving excursions and in a few years, Sinai became the top-notch tourist destination for all middle and upper-middle class Egyptians and for a wide variety of Europeans running away from the harsh winters of the north. And we were all happy.

Except in the middle of all the reveling we missed one little thing: while Israeli settlers came and went and while tourists come and go, some people had been there throughout and still are. How many times have we—people as well as government that is—stopped to wonder what kind of a life they are living and what kind of an impact the occupation has had on them and their posterity? When I first started hearing about the Bedouins—the term being commonly used to refer to the inhabitants of Sinai even though it is not exclusive to them—I was surprised to hear words like “treason,” “disloyalty,” and “collaboration” used in every other sentence. “They have never pledged allegiance to Egypt. They were crying bitter tears when the Israelis left.” I am not sure if anyone of those who said this classic line that I have heard over and over almost word for word had indeed saw for himself/herself those tears, but that’s not the issue. It is no secret that the Bedouins were quite prosperous during the occupation and that their businesses— be that agriculture, trade, or tourism—boomed remarkably at the time. Putting ethical questions about establishing ties with the occupier aside, let us take a quick look at the status of those same Bedouins after their land went back to its rightful owners. While the farewell tears were hearsay, other facts on the ground are not.

I can go on forever about the way Bedouins are treated as second-class citizens and the deplorable conditions in which they live as far as education, medical care, and infrastructure are concerned, but I would rather focus on the past few years in which Bedouins were rounded up, tortured, and detained without trials and in several cases shot dead by the police based on some supernatural assumption that any terrorist attack that took place in Sinai must have been planned and carried out by them. Why? Because they have always been traitors so why would they stop being so now? The animosity between Bedouins and security forces kept increasing amid fears of a violent escalation, especially that several of the Sinai tribes are known to be armed. That was quite alarming, but more so was the discourse that accompanied the clampdowns and which treated Sinai as a state with a state and played on people’s hostile feelings towards Israel by stressing that they are more citizens of the Hebrew state than of Egypt and the way news about hundreds of Bedouins trying to cross into Israel after killings by the Egyptian police was manipulated by the media was the perfect fuel to the fire. The ploy succeeded and sympathy for the nomadic compatriots—which gained unprecedented momentum after the brutal police raids— started receding bit by bit. Bottom line is we were back to square one—zero in fact.

Then came the time when we leaped several squares forward, when it was clear who pledged allegiance to what and in Tahrir I ran into Sinai Bedouins all the time, all calling for the ouster of the regime and for the liberation of the one country every protestor in the square belonged to. It was then that the specter of the South Sudan started fading and I saw nothing but unison and a common cause. Yet when this common cause—mistakenly thought at the time to be confined to overthrowing Mubarak—was victorious, each went to his or her house/city/village/peninsula and square one seemed like the last stop once more. True there had been attempts at reconciliation but sitting around the fire with the chiefs of a couple of tribes does nothing to solve the problem exactly like a trip to Uganda does not mean Nile Basin states have started a new honeymoon. I am sure the Bedouins of Sinai are not as alienated as before now that the regime that made them so is no longer in power, but sitting back and assuming that’s it will eventually trigger a relapse—maybe irreversible this time.

The South Sudanese did not vote for secession because they are not loyal, but rather because they are very loyal… to their people who had suffered for years under a government that classified citizens based on their compliance with the ruling party. I am not sure they would have done the same had they been treated justly, and I guess we can see that Quebec is still part of Canada and that the French and German speaking parts of Switzerland are still within the same borders.

This obsession almost bordered an incurable syndrome a couple of days ago when I watched ‘The Adjustment Bureau,’ a 2011 film based on a short story by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick and starring Matt Damon, one of my favorite actors and maybe that was a factor. New York Congressman David Norris is being chased, rather harassed, by a group of men who call themselves ‘The Adjustment Bureau.’ The first time they abduct him, members of the Bureau explain to Norris that their mission is to ensure everything human beings do goes according to some ‘plan,’ illustrated in a peculiar book with maze-like figures that they attribute to the head of the Bureau, who they call the ‘Chairman.’ Because he is a unique politician with a promising future ahead of him and a potential presidential candidate, the Bureau is particularly interested in Norris and sets out to watch him and make sure he does not deviate from the path charted for him.

There is a problem, though. Norris is in love with a woman from outside the ‘plan,’ one they think will be detrimental to his political career not because she will intentionally ruin him, but rather because their relationship will provide him with the fulfillment he usually gets from his work so his ambition will become less ferocious and the country will sustain a crippling loss.

One more problem. Despite a series of threats to both Norris and his lover and even though actual harm starts befalling both of them, he is not willing to give her up and neither is she. After a series of failed attempts, Bureau members realize they are dealing with an unbreakable bond that defies all predetermined plans and insists on formulating its own fate. At the face of such invincible power, the Chairman of the Bureau succumbs and instead of forcing the lovers to act in accordance with his plan, this very same plane is redesigned to accommodate their unyielding desire to stay together.

Let not the happily-ever-after kind of ending deceive you for this is not a movie about star-crossed lovers and the perils they go through to save their love. This is a story of power relations and the different definitions of ‘fate.’ The Adjustment Bureau can be any authority—typically in a dictatorship I would say—that spares no effort to brainwash its subjects into believing that whatever situation they are in is part of a fate they cannot tamper with and that any attempt at changing the way things are going is equivalent to challenging the hegemony of God.

This strategy does not only consolidate the power of this authority and expand the scope of its tyranny, but also gradually undermines any belief on the subjects’ part that changing the status quo is by any means possible. The second part does indeed play a much bigger role since the more you make people believe they have no free will, the more you guarantee that they will not rebel. Subjugation, in this case, is not the result of fear but rather becomes the natural evolution of a growing sense of helplessness in the face of any force that is perceived as unchangeable. When the question of why Egyptians do not rebel was brought up, the expected answer would be that they are afraid of the reaction of the repressive regime, while the official response was a bit different: ‘The Egyptian people are just not ready for democracy,’ you would hear top statesmen say. While this started as the government’s discourse, it gradually become the people’s too, for Egyptians themselves started believing they are actually not ready for anything other than being told what to do since they are too incompetent to determine what they want to do with their lives.

Like the members of the Adjustment Bureau, whose identity is a peculiar mixture of the human and the divine, you start confusing figures of authority with untouchable beings and standing against them becomes equivalent to challenging God. In case of the Egyptian regime and the bureau, the idea of fate is constantly manipulated in order to instill in the people that fear of the consequences that would render them eternally paralyzed in the face of this power that no matter what they do will never be conquered. Knowing that any attempt at rebellion will not only be futile but might also incur a great deal of damage, they end up with an overwhelming despondency that is constantly justified as an acceptance of God’s will and a rejection of any semblance of ingratitude towards it. This becomes clear in the way Islamist fundamentalists used to talk simple-minded people into believing that rebelling against the ruler is against Islam since it constitutes an objection to some divine plan whose features might not be clear now but which will eventually turn out to be beneficial for them even if not in this life.

It is only when the two lovers decide their relationship is worth the risk that they are able to change the course of that plan imposed on them from ‘up above’ that they were able to take control of their lives. This fate, Egyptians also realized, was not ordained by anyone other than those powers that everything in the capacity to subjugate those they perceived as too weak to move a thumb or even think of doing so.

When in one of the several arguments he has with Bureau members Norris insists that he has the right to make his own choices, one of the top adjusters asks him to consider the destruction human beings had brought upon themselves and the entire planet when they were given free will and cited the Dark Ages, the two world wars, and the Cuban missile crisis. This is the twisted logic you use when you want to deprive people of a right that you know very well will empower them. It’s like not allowing your kids to eat on their own because you know how much mess this newly-acquired independence will entail but since this is not the argument that works with them, you tell them they will wet their bed at night if they do so. Yet stopping the kid from growing up into an independent human being who is capable of dealing with the mess he or she creates is a disruption of the natural order and at a certain stage wetting the bed becomes no longer a threat.

‘Fight for your fate’ is the tagline of ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ and should be the slogan of any uprising that decides to do away with the idea of changing fate as some kind of blasphemy. Conformity is the enemy of any revolution and it is only when you longer let yourself be adjusted that you shift from the passive to the active voice and that your fingers start becoming trained to moving the same strings used for decades to control every movement you make.

Throw them into the sea and show them what “wet” really means? Talk some sense into them by explaining how grave the situation is and how stupid and childish their behavior is? Pretend they don’t exist until they themselves do it on your behalf and willingly opt for the sea?

While you think of an answer, let me tell you a little story that you might be familiar with already but that might be helpful in offering a quick overview of what is happening now in a country struggling to protect its revolution from all crouching tigers and hidden dragons. Liberals and Islamists are fighting over what comes first, drafting a new constitution or holding parliamentary elections, anger is mounting as policemen charged with shooting and killing unarmed protestors are still at large, cries of foul play are echoing all over the country with unjustified delay in prosecuting the president and his family, patience is running thin as far as purging the Interior Ministry and other government bodies from “remnants” of the former regime are concerned… and so on and so forth… I will need whole volumes to explain how turbulent the situation is right now.

But lo and behold! A much more pressing problem has just emerged and turns out we suck at identifying our real enemies and were busying ourselves with trivial matters. The catastrophe started when a famous Coptic businessman posted on Twitter a cartoon depicting Mickey Mouse with a beard and Minnie Mouse with a face veil. With a caption that read “Mickey and Minnie after,” the cartoon was obviously a tongue-in-cheek attempt at envisioning what Egypt would be like in case fundamentalist Islamists reach power. He might have done that while drinking his morning coffee or on his way to work or while he was dozing off in bed after a long day of meetings, so may be he did not concentrate enough to realize that he was, in fact, waging a war against Islam.

Had reactions to rampant corruption, police brutality, and abuse of power in pre-revolution Egypt been half as forceful and quarter as fast as the response to this cartoon, we would have become the most democratic, advanced, and civilized country in the whole world. In what seemed like no time, fierce online campaigns calling for boycotting the mobile phone company owned by the telecommunications mogul and rendering every penny entering the man’s pocket blood money attracted thousands of supporters—around 60,000 on Facebook alone. Yet, what happens in the virtual world does not stay there more than a couple of hours, for stock market shares of companies owned by the same businessman were actually reported to have fallen following the campaign and more than 15 Islamist lawyers filed lawsuits against him for “deriding religion” and “mocking Islam” and all those charges leveled against any “heretic” who steps on the toes of Salafi ideologues.

He apologized by the way. Well, not sure if it was an apology or rather a lamentation over the way things are heading. “That was a joke and I am sorry if some people did not take it as such. No disrespect intended,” he tweeted, and the picture was then removed.

Did this solve the problem? In other words, what exactly does this “apology” mean? That he is now convinced he is the criminal they claim him to be and that he is now repenting and asking for forgiveness? That they now understand that this was a joke and will therefore not make the same fuss over similar incidents? The answer to both is NO. The alleged culprit confessed under duress and the self-appointed judge will pass the harshest verdict anyway and none of them will get over the other’s “offence,” so what’s the point? Plus, this is not about a picture posted or a tweet regretting it nor is it just about the rising tide of intolerance that has been sweeping the country since a group of extremists decided it is by their norms that all Egyptians should go. It is mainly about abusing a revolution that gave them on a silver platter the freedom they did not work to get—the slightest fraction of which they would have never dreamt of enjoying under the former regime—only to deprive others of it. It is also about the emotional blackmail of a public that is easily deceived into believing its religion is under constant attack by some dark forces that aim at taking Egypt back to the times when gods were made of date paste. All this aside, it is first and foremost and regrettably about shocking indifference to the insurmountable ordeals through which the country is going and unexplainable insistence on diverting the attention to superficial matters that would have not ordinarily taken more than a few minutes and a couple of laughs had they not been raised to threat level Red.

It is not of much relevance now to investigate whether Islamists were really offended by the cartoon—I find it very hard to figure out why anyone on earth would be—or if they are just making up for decades of in-the-dark existence through seeking as much limelight as they can get. In both cases, the ruckus stirred over the cartoon—which, I believe, should be studied as a work of social criticism and a testimonial of a time of blurred vision and conflicting ideologies—does nothing more than betraying an absolute apathy as far as national wellbeing is concerned and a corresponding ego-centric keenness to pull off some theatrical feat that grants the once behind the scene troupe a leading role in what they mistakenly assume can eventually be a one man show.

Back to the sinking boat and the whining wet. Throwing the trouble makers into the sea is in flagrant violation of all ethical codes that stipulate safeguarding the lives of all passengers regardless of how annoying they might be and is also bound to earn them a great deal of sympathy even from passengers who had themselves wished to opt for the sea exit. Reasoning with them when every split of a second could mean one more life lost or ten more liters of water into the boat will be setting the stage for the perfect homicide/suicide scenario so you will either die yourself or live forever with the guilt of abandoning your fellow passengers to the treacherous waves.

Leave them be or, to be more accurate, engage in this type of passive resistance that combines between not wasting the effort much needed for saving the boat and those on board and not allowing them to drag the rest of the group to that state of self-pity that robs them of their will to float.

Seeing that everyone around them knows their own priorities and are determined to move on, they will either feel left out and make up their mind to join the life/boat guards or feel left out and make up their minds to find refuge in the bottom of the deep blue. Their choice!

In all cases, Mickey will be able to shave and Minnie will once again reveal her smile and Sir Walt Disney, who must have been turning in his grave since the cartoon was released, can hope to rest in peace.

The so-called liberals claim we are against gender equality and that the way we view gentler sex is against the principles of citizenship… or was that last one about Copts? It all gets mixed up because they lash out at anything that abides by the teachings of Islam and call that “democracy.” We hope they know they are the ones who would burn in hell, but it’s no good time for judgment day issues; that’s politics now and we need to focus. We can throw some big event that shows how we appreciate women and believe in the role they play in society. But like what? Not charity of course. This is too cliché and is not the in thing now that everyone is talking revolution and parties and constitution. We have to show that statements about us excluding women are blatant lies that only aim at tarnishing our image. We need to give the impression that the “brotherhood” is not just made up of men. Sounds a bit weird? Yes, a little bit. How can we avoid that? Well then… how about having a “sisterhood”?

Let us have all the Muslim “sisters” in one place, have the supreme leader give a speech on the importance of women, get a lot of media coverage, and we’re done. Maybe holding a conference is a good idea and maybe we can give it some catchy name like… let’s see… “Women from Revolution to Renaissance”… very creative indeed!

And equally misleading if I may add.

Maybe there was a part of the conference that was held behind the scenes and this was when they talked about “revolution” and/or “renaissance” unless staying at home and raising the kids and maybe occasionally doing some religious preaching is the Brotherhood’s or Sisterhood’s definition of those two words. When the supreme guide gave a speech that was supposed to chart the course of the “sisters” in the “coming phase,” it was things like political parties, women empowerment, elections, and those topics that follow such a drastic change in a country’s history that we expected to hear. However, I challenge anyone to detect the slightest difference between any of the phases, coming or going. The “sisters” are now assigned the epic mission of guess what? Teaching their children ethics and values—because other women don’t usually do that?—and raising them in accordance with Islamic principles—well, women who don’t do that last bit don’t deserve to be “sisters” maybe. Of course, the supreme guide did not miss the most important duty any woman should be dedicated to—obeying her husband. No need to mention the eternal connection made between donning the veil and morality—who dares accuse them of exclusionism?

To avoid being unfair, there is another equally daunting task all the “sisters” should unite to carry out: being aware and raising awareness about the “malignant” conspiracies weaved against Muslim women, said a top “sister” at the conference. The closing statement warned of the same menace that aims at making Muslim women “deviate from their Islamic values.” It was not clear, however, who exactly is behind those conspiracies. The West? Egyptian “non-sisters”? Or is this just a continuation of the eternal tradition of self-victimization that might have been justified at the time of a repressive regime but now sounds as hollow as the attempt to project a fake image of women rights advocacy. Actually, this self-victimization may be the only thing that both “brothers” and “sisters” will have equal shares of in the “coming phase.”

As hundreds of “sisters” turned up, one couldn’t help but wonder where they have all been before and why this stellar appearance now. The deputy supreme guide has the answer: they were being “protected” from the brutality of Egyptian authorities and which only men were capable of facing. Apparently, the “sisters” enjoy a great deal of freedom within the group and that is why they only show up when they are given permission to do so and would agree to stay in hiding for decades because they are too fragile to do men’s work. In this case, it is only logical to ask for details about the “sisters’” role in the revolution? Did they take to the streets starting January 25 onwards and shout “Down with Mubarak!” and risked pay their lives in return for the country’s freedom? Or did they wait and see before getting into trouble with the regime in vain? Well, their “brothers” opted for the second so no need to give the matter too much thought anyway.

Ask me what I love about the Muslim Brotherhood—I am not being sarcastic this time—and I will tell you their unequalled ability at accusing others of tarnishing their image while no one does a better job than they do. Since the ouster of the regime, the MB has been offered a golden opportunity at exposing themselves to the public like never before and while thinking the revolution is helping them they overlooked the fact that it has so far been helping no one but their opponents who now have countless pieces of evidence that the group’s “justice” and “freedom”—the two words they used for their party—proclamations prove self-destructive the moment they come to the light.

Ask the “brothers” to issue a booklet detailing the requirements a woman should meet in order to be considered for membership of the “sisterhood” and those will be enough to sum up what I am trying to say. After that ask yourself how come a group that openly objects to women becoming presidents can have any respect for that entire sex or can really believe they have any role to play outside their household chores or independent from the men they have to obey.

Then let us all ask ourselves what the future of the country would look like if only “brothers” and “sisters” are eligible for citizenship.

Then let me be a bit selfish and ask myself whether in this case, I would prefer to be a “sister” and stay or remain a whatever-they-will-choose-to-label-me… and also stay!

I will, therefore, be left with one of two options. I can totally ignore the whole issue and say to myself, “I don’t give a damn what names he calls me. Let him rot in hell!” or I can start investigating the issue and try to understand why I am being called names that I generally assumed did not apply to me. The first option looks much easier because a word told to me every morning won’t kill me and by time it will lose the shocking impact it had in the first couple of times and because I will always treat this word as a groundless accusation that can never make me lose my self-confidence or have doubts about whether or not I am a good person. This makes sense of course, but if I opt for this, there is one question I need to ask myself: Am I sure that it would stop at “whore”? Seeing that I am treating him as thin air, wouldn’t he start to take a different course of action whether to grab my attention or to get back at me for whatever wrong I had done him and also for insisting to ignore him? As for the second option, it is indeed more of a hassle, but at the end of the day I find it much fairer for both of us: I deserve to know what is it about me that provokes the man that much even though I am sure he is mistaken in his perception of me and he deserves to have his grievance heard even though I have a very strong objection to the way he voices it. If one day instead of getting into the car and turning on the radio, I stopped and asked him why he is doing this, I might either realize that I had in one way or another done that man some wrong and need to redress it or there may be some kind of misunderstanding that I can clear so the man can stop wasting his time with me and can go look for the real “whore” he is after.

The Egyptian government has so far chosen to go for the first option when, after the third time the pipeline that transmits natural gas to Israel was blown up, phrases like “act of sabotage” are still being used and the priority is still getting hold of who did it. Even though I agree that the action itself is indeed a criminal offence and that the culprits have to be penalized accordingly, I am astounded by how the crux of the matter is totally overlooked and how targeting this pipeline in particular is treated like setting tires on fire or blocking highways. When in several protests police vehicles were burnt, it was very obvious that this was not simply an act of vandalism but rather an expression of extreme indignation at the Ministry of Interior and the countless abuses in which it has been involved for decades. Does it make any sense then that destroying a pipeline that takes Egyptian gas to Israel is not seen in the same light?

Despite the necessity of bringing to justice those who did that—they are apparently the same people who did the first and second times since the exact same methods were used in the detonation—I am sorry to say that we need to focus on a much more crucial issue: why they did that. Of course the answer is known, but ways of addressing it are not.

Calls for halting the export of natural gas to Israel are not new and reports that Egypt was selling for a ridiculously low price such a substantial source of energy at the time when millions are living without electricity and specifically to what the majority of Egyptians looks upon as an enemy state only “added more water to the mud” as the Egyptian saying goes. Now, it’s getting much muddier than ever because the regime that was accused of selling the whole country, not only gas, is no longer around and a revolution whose main objective was restoring the dignity of Egyptians is expected to take a decisive action towards that end. Taking an action does not mean the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces should plant a couple of dynamite sticks in the pipeline or the minister of foreign affairs should shut down the Israeli embassy in Cairo. It rather means giving more time and effort to tackling the reasons that might have led to consecutive attempts at destroying the line and to realizing that it is not only about money and diplomatic ties and that we are supposed to be starting an era where priority is to what the people want.

People want to no longer feel they are betraying their Palestinian brethren; this terrible feeling that had gnawed at their hearts every time the border was closed to the 1.5 million trapped in Gaza and every time they heard reports that it was with Egypt’s blessing that the 2008-2009 brutal Israeli aggression was carried. They have had enough guilt trips every time they see the Israeli flag fluttering in the skies of Cairo and have always tried to convince themselves—and may I add failed to do so—that the peace treaty was for the best and that these are things whose magnitude ignorant people like us cannot grasp. Yet, to gladly and cheaply provide Israel with something of which both Egyptians and Palestinians are deprived—who is more entitled to those billions of cubic meters of gas?—is seen as an outrageous violation not only of the rights of Egyptian citizens but also of the Palestinian cause of which they are staunch supporters, and ignoring the angry reaction that had lasted for years was just another of the regime’s assertions that the people are its last priority.

Now, things are supposed to take a different course and the fact that they are not is what triggers those acts of “sabotage.” Whoever did that do not belong to thugs that looted stores when the police withdrew or to Mubarak supporters who want to scare protestors away from Tahrir Square when they were still hopeful the revolution would bear no fruit. Those who ventured into the bumpy desert roads to make Israel sure doesn’t receive the 45 percent of its gas needs Egypt provides it with is making a very clear and unmistakable statement and sending a warning that the prevalence of justice is not just about court hearings and constitution drafts.

The perpetrators of what I would like to call “a political operation” might eventually be identified and they will be arrested and interrogated then brought to court and may be later put in jail. Fine, but will that—and I mean that only—really solve the problem whether in the sense that the pipeline will be safe forever or that the entire population will end up offering gas home delivery service across the border?

Forgot to mention a third way of dealing with the man who crowned me as a “whore.” I can call the police, tell them he’s been stalking me for a while and have him arrested and make sure I never see his face again. But will I, or the police, guarantee that he won’t come back with vengeance and make sure I listen to that grievance I had previously ignored—except this time it may be by force and with chances at a real reconciliation almost non-existent?