Category: Letter from Cairo

When I started driving, I realized that running a red light, parking under the no parking sign, or entering a no entry street are the teaser you get to see when you are an outsider… the real action starts when you are actually behind the wheel and when you view a bumper car ride as safer and more law-abiding than maneuvering your way through the streets of the capital. Try to look at a main Cairene street during rush hour from the tenth floor and you will spare me the strenuous effort I would have to exert to describe a spectacle no sane mind can conceive as anything other than the most advanced level of some car racing game, except that in the Egyptian version it is not who arrives first at the destination, but who breaks more rules, who calls fellow motorists more names, who runs or is about to run over as many pedestrians as possible, who gives more honks, and who double, triple, and quadruple parks until you end up with a one-lane street. I remember when in the U.S. a friend of mine told me I can use her car whenever I wanted, and another friend looked at her in disbelief and said, “How can you let an Egyptian drive your car?” She looked at him scornfully then replied, “If she can drive in Egypt, she can drive anywhere else in the world.”

The international reputation of Egypt’s traffic was not new to me because a couple of months before this conversation, I heard a joke that represented for me the perfect example of a tragic-comedy: A man takes a cab in New York and is terrified to see how the driver runs a red light. “Don’t worry… Egyptian,” goes the driver. One red light after the other and the passenger gets the same response: “Don’t worry… Egyptian” until it was time for a green light and, to the passenger’s astonishment, the driver stops. Before he could inquire, the driver was quick to answer: “Maybe unuzzer Egyptian.”

Back to my friend who gave me the car… I do owe her lot because it is thanks to her that I learnt that driving could be a pleasure and that people can go out of their houses for a drive. For me, this was a totally absurd concept since in Egypt you drive because you have to and had you been given the choice, you would not have gotten out of your house in the first place. When I discovered how relaxing it is to drive while abiding by the rules and while everyone around you does the same, I wondered why Egyptians choose the hard way and make a battle of the shortest of trips while they can just sit back and listen to Dixie Chicks “Taking the long way round”—a favorite of mine and this friend— while moving smoothly towards wherever they’re going. Breaking some rules could be fun for many people, but this doesn’t apply to traffic because every time you run an errand, you go back home with the feeling that you have been hiking up the Andes and because if you look around you, it becomes very obvious that none of those law-breakers is having a good time at all.

I don’t want to seem like I lay the blame for every single problem in the country on the former regime, but I can’t help doing so even if my theory is wrong. The parallelism between traffic and the regime became obvious to me when the more tyrannical the regime grew, the more chaotic traffic became and the more aggressively motorists, from owners of sports cars to bus drivers, behaved. For me, this was not really attributed to the regime’s indifference as far as abiding by the law is concerned even though I know that the regime thrived on breaking the law neither is it a direct result of the regime’s encouragement of all kinds of behavioral patterns that distract the people from the real reasons behind their miserable lives even though I know that the regime always managed to nourish animosities whenever possible—sectarian tension and football rivalry being the most notorious instances. Apart from the regime’s attempts to ensure the prevalence of chaos, and which had always worked very well, it is important to see why people responded to those plans and, in fact, seemed to implement them with much ease and a quite shocking steadfastness.

The road was one of the very few domains where Egyptians were able to be in control and the rage vented out on it was the only means of proving that this is where they can prevail. Road rage, for me, is like sexual harassment, for I don’t subscribe to the theory that the frustration that drives a man to grab parts of a woman’s body is really “sexual” and is motivated by the youths’ inability to get married and have an intimate relationship with a woman.

I see sexual harassment as an act of pure violation in which the perpetrator’s resentment at almost every lack of fulfillment in his life comes out in one of the very few actions in which he can prove he is strong and capable of wanting something and getting it. Sexual harassment becomes the best outlet because it is directed at a person always looked upon as weaker and more unlikely to react violently, which will not be the case if he decides to punch another man in the face for example. With road rage, it is played safe, too, since almost all parties involved in traffic brawls know that with each fighter sheltered in a car and with each hostile act taking no more than a few seconds, two birds will be hit with one stone—you will vent your anger and you will most probably emerge unscathed.

So when a fellow motorist gives a left signal and you press the gas pedal with all your might so you can pass in the narrow space between him and the curb right before he turns—even though you might be going right after all—it is as if you feel insulted by this signal that should oblige you to give in to somebody else’s will. “It’s not up to you to decide,” you seem to be warning him. And when a pedestrian shows the first signs of wanting to cross and you also press the gas pedal, a little harder this time maybe, so you can go first even if this means that you might be a split of a second away from running him over and might have to make a sharp swerve to avoid doing that, it is as is letting him cross means bestowing upon him a privilege he doesn’t deserve. “Nobody respects me, so why should I respect you?” he might be wanting to ask the pedestrian who would then be jumping in fright and wondering if he should have written a will. It is an eye for an eye most of the time.

That same pedestrian might intentionally jump from nowhere in front of you car and knowingly risk his own life so he can see the expressions of shock and confusion on your face and even some guilt if the car does actually hit him—he doesn’t mind a couple of bruises here and there for the fun of it—in order to deliver to you more or less the same message—with a little variation, though: “If you can kill me, I can make you wet your pants.” And when you curse a fellow motorist and all his ancestry and offspring because he honked at you or asked you to turn off the high beam or complained that you double parked in front of his car, it is not because you don’t feel you’re wrong and you won’t get equally furious if the same happens to you. It is just that in a place where you can’t speak your mind and can’t choose who makes decisions on your behalf and can’t live as a respectable citizen, you wouldn’t mind labeling the driver next to you with all those nasty attributes you have been for a long time piling up against the president and the ministers and the police and the regime and the whole country. It is a very basic process of re-channeling anger and, consequently, putting off an always-imminent explosion.

Watching Cairo traffic from a distance gives you the impression that this a country at war with itself, that all its people have turned against each other and every citizen is impatiently awaiting the chance to jump his compatriots’ throats. Although this is not entirely true, it is also not entirely wrong. They were engaged in this not-so-mortal combat because they had to create imaginary enemies in the only place where they felt powerful even for a few minutes, rather hours since we’re talking Cairo traffic. However, think how the situation would be if all those whose main preoccupation is cutting off other cars, tailgating cars that they think are too slow, cussing at whoever takes their parking spot, and stopping in the middle of the road just to retaliate on the driver behind you for honking too much are suddenly faced with a humongous trailer moving towards them at the speed of light and intent on crushing anything that stands in its way. Would they still engage in trivial skirmishes until their cars, with them inside, are leveled to the ground? Would anyone think about who goes first and who parks where and who honked at whom and who cursed the day on which who was born? Maybe not!

Maybe they will reflect for a moment, look at one another then to the monster approaching then yell in the most melodious of unisons, “Don’t worry… Egyptians!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retrieving this land not only brings back to the country the confidence it had lost when this land was gone, but also recovers this country’s image in front of the whole world so it would emerge proud and strong after it was only seen as broken and helpless, especially if the war in which this land was taken constituted the most shameful defeat in the country’s modern history, which was the case with the 1967 conflict. A drastic change in the balance of power takes place between the victorious country and its former occupier, too, as the former turns from a colony to a partner and starts holding negotiations from a position of power rather than as the weaker part always expected to offer concessions. The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel—putting aside the controversy over how wise it was to sign or how far it benefited us—bespeaks this change in the relationship between what used to be colonized and colonizer. But territorial dignity is short-lived, not because the land will be taken back, but because the euphoria that accompanies liberating it starts fading away gradually as people get caught up again in the daily grind and as they realize that winning the war is not related to any internal changes that would reflect directly on them. They still lived under a despotic regime where every voice of opposition was brutally silenced and their personal problems—be that poverty, unemployment, physical illness—have not be solved the moment the Bar Lev line collapsed. Territorial dignity, therefore, did not grant Egyptians any more civil rights; on the contrary, Anwar el-Sadat was getting more tyrannical by the hour and before his death he had already had all sorts of naysayers in jail—Islamists, Communists, Copts, feminists… you name it.

Years passed… territorial dignity became nothing more than a chapter in a history textbook… one despotic regime replaced another and made sure the word “dignity” is obliterated from the vocabulary of each and every single Egyptian, except maybe the occasional cynicism and the intermittent lamentation of old glories. With more than one third of the population illiterate, unemployed, and/or living under the poverty line and with rampant corruption inundating the pockets and bank accounts of the rich with the money on which the poor were supposed to survive and with regime critics jailed, tortured, and sometimes killed, dignity was nowhere to be seen. In fact, territorial dignity that was once looked upon as incapable of protecting citizens from all sorts of humiliation to which they were subjected for ruffling the authorities’ feathers started turning into the only source of pride for Egyptians and Sadat, previously slammed as a dictator, was hailed as a hero and his faults were suddenly overlooked. “At least he did something for Egypt,” was what you would here every time a comparison was made between him and his successor, Hosni Mubarak. Some even tried to dig a little bit further and summoned up the memory of Gamal Abdel Nasser who, previously held accountable for the loss of territorial dignity, became an icon of resistance and courage. “At least he confronted Israel,” went another comparison.

More years passed… the situation was getting worse by the minute… Egyptians turned out to have dug out “dignity” from some ancient dictionary right before the word, whose letters were barely visible, totally faded into the yellowness of the tattered pages. They tore it out and ran with the scrap of disintegrated paper, racing with the little time left before the last specs of ink disappear forever. They made it, and before it was too late, “dignity” was imprinted in gold with font 80 million on a one million square kilometer papyrus. That was what I would call “national dignity,” the type in which people are given the right of self-determination by virtue of their being the full-fledged citizens of a given country. The January 25 Revolution bid farewell to the era where Egyptians had no say as to who governs them, had no right to protest against injustices inflicted upon them and had to live in constant fear of retaliation in case they did so, and had no power to stray from the blindfolded cattle herd they had been made to become over the years. This kind of dignity started slowly injecting itself into the veins of Egyptians the moment they took to the streets, calling for an end to repression and vowing that the age of bowing is gone with no hope of return, then at a faster speed flowed into all the main arteries as the protestors’ determination proved unshaken by all criminal attempts to nip the revolution in the bud until it was finally pumped full throttle to a heart that trembled with that unprecedented gush of life when the regime declared its defeat by the will of the people. The forcefulness of the first flood required a few moments of repose, and the flow—now more like gentle waves rather than the initial tsunami—continued its course smoothly as Egyptians established their first real contact with ballot boxes and went out to vote on the constitutional amendments and to mark the inauguration of their involvement in that “restricted area” called politics. The referendum was not only fulfilling in the sense that it gave Egyptians that first chance to decide what they want, but also a big part of the pleasure derived from the process was that the fact that it served as a rehearsal for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections that are supposed be the culmination of that type of dignity that turned out to be much more precious than its territorial sister.

Not the most precious, though… not on its own at least. When a country secures its borders and gains sovereignty on its territories then its citizens are given the right to exercise all their democratic rights, you have covered two sides of the triangle. Now remains the last and most difficult to achieve, what I would call “personal dignity.” If territorial dignity can be obtained by war and national dignity reclaimed by revolution, personal dignity requires a series of complicated procedures that, unlike many might expect, are much harder to implement than those other massive actions that alter the fate of nations and change the face of history. In a regime that made tightening its grip on power, plundering national resources, and silencing all opposition its top priorities, robbing citizens of their feeling of self-worth was a very important step toward guaranteeing the maintenance of the status quo. When people are deprived of all the possible tools of a decent living from food and shelter to education and employment, not to mention a human treatment that might at least make up for material losses, they start seeing themselves as the regime sees them and wants them to see themselves—useless, incompetent, and dispensable. They begin developing a nihilist attitude and nothing but religious prohibitions keeps them from committing suicide. In fact, I have always thought that the Tunisian Bou Azizi set himself ablaze on behalf of all his disgruntled fellows in Egypt. With killing themselves out of the question, they had decided to cope with the undignified life they seemed to have been stuck with until God chooses to relieve them of its agonies. Known for their outstanding adaptability and their general tendency to accept what appears to be unchangeable, this lack of dignity became no longer a source of misery and gradually turned into a style of life.

A civil servant won’t try to be implicit when asking you to grease his palm in order to process your driver’s license or issue a copy of your birth certificate, a policeman would tell you bluntly that he will cancel your violation ticket if you give him “whatever your generosity admits, madam,” a self-proclaimed valet would pop out of nowhere and forcefully helps you to park and bangs on your car if you don’t pay him in return, and the security guy at the bank smiles at you saying, “Many happy returns”—for apparently some daily occasion that I am not aware of—and expecting you to pay him after every single time you take money from the ATM machine. As for the amount of people, ages three and up, who descend upon you from the heavens above asking for money for several reasons—the most common spectacle being a woman holding a child and swearing he is being treated for some fatal disease or a man on a wheel chair swearing he needs an operation for half a million pounds—they are on the verge of forming their own trade union. When you don’t give them money, you always end up being called all the names you can imagine. I remember one of those little girls actually spitting at me and yelling most vengefully, “You will never get married”—as if that was bad!

There is no way I would dare lay the blame on them because I don’t think that anybody would be given the chance to live in dignity and choose humiliation instead. Like all Egyptians, they are the victims of a regime whose utmost ambition was to rule a kingdom of the submissive disenfranchised whose only means to deal with their already deplorable situation is making it all the more deplorable by stripping it of any traces of dignity. If relinquishing dignity will help them get for themselves what the government no longer considers its duty, then to hell with this dignity that makes you sleep with an empty tummy.

Has the revolution changed that? No, it has not, because you need to feed people before talking to them about democracy and you need to get them jobs before familiarizing them with potential presidential candidates and you need to provide them with four walls and a ceiling before you introduce them to the importance of establishing a civil state. Most importantly, you have to acquaint them with the concept of dignity… teach them that the reason for the debased life they have suffered is no longer there and that it is high time they raise their heads up high and know that they belong to a great people who made a revolution so that no one will be anymore ashamed of being Egyptian or feel that Egypt does not belong to him or her… so that youths won’t risk their lives on homemade boats and drown on the way to Italy.

A friend of mine once called me ruthless for refusing to give money to beggars and street children and I told her that this country is going nowhere as long as people do not have dignity. “This country is not going anywhere anyway, darling,” she scoffed. That was before the revolution. Now, I insist more than ever on doing the same thing because only then can the marginalized move to the center and can Egyptians hereby certify that they are a truly dignified people.

I have always been aware of the importance of virginity in Egypt—like other Arab and Muslim countries—and how tied it is with how chaste—read worthy of a respectable man’s attention—a girl is. Dozens of Egyptian movies depicted the dilemma of girls who lose their virginity and the endings ranged from the lover marrying the girl right before she slits her wrists or jumps off the stairs to get rid of the baby, thus “covering up the scandal” as the expression goes, to the other extreme when the girl’s brother or father decides to kill her and “wash off her disgrace,” also as the expression goes. However, it was quite strange to see virginity an issue in an American soap opera where the protagonists engaged in extramarital relationships and cheated on their wives/husbands all the time. Yet, the shocking bit was the way they made the rape of a virgin sound much more unforgivable than that of a non-virgin in an implication-bordering-on-statement that there is something pure about a virgin that cannot be desecrated and that whoever does so becomes more brutal than if the victim is “loose” or “has had previous relations” or “cares not for her honor” or whatever what this differentiation might bring to your mind.

This actually reminded me of something I read a while ago about how in many countries the way the woman was dressed when she got raped is taken into consideration when issuing a verdict against the rapist. So, basically a nun would gain much more sympathy if raped than a girl in a miniskirt simply because it was totally out of the first’s hand while the second more or less invited it. The same applies to a virgin who loses the “most precious” of her assets when raped as opposed to the non-virgin who has nothing to lose. To cut a long story short, a virgin is much worthy of respect and sympathy and support, apparently not only in our part of the world.

Regardless of the general fuss about virginity and how much time or effort societies and individuals give to estimate the value of a woman based on its presence/absence, it is not usually the issue you expect to come up in a country in which a despotic regime has been toppled and a new democratic one is struggling to see the light and specifically one that is not devoid of explosive sectarian tensions, critical security challenges, and endless political squabbles. Well… statements made by an army general about virginity tests conducted on detained female protestors proved that apparently there are more important issues that we had all overlooked since the start of the revolution and that it was now time to give them due attention owing to the role they will play in determining the future of Egypt: Are the protestors virgins or not? What if they are? And what if they are not? How exactly would this make a difference for Egypt or the army or the virgins/non-virgins? The general, who spoke on condition of anonymity even though he seemed to be heart and soul defending the action, did not really provide any answers to these questions. In fact, he did provide a couple of answers that were even more disastrous than the shocking revelation he made.

The women, arrested by the Military Police in a protest that took place on March 9, were not like “your daughter or mine,” said the general to the interviewer and we got to assume that both their daughters are decent ones while the detainees were not. On what basis did he issue this judgment? Good question! And the general is never at loss when it comes to answers. Those women engaged in profane activities in which the two other girls—the daughters—cannot be associated: they stayed in tents with male protestors. So does this mean that if they are not virgins then it is because of this? Or because they are not virgins they did that? No, the answer is different. The general and his fellow chastity inquisitors wanted to make sure that those women wouldn’t go around saying that they were raped by army officers and that they got in pure and got out sullied. “So, we wanted to prove that they were not virgins in the first place,” goes the argument. One more question before I go mad: Does a woman who loses her virginity become immune to all kinds of sexual assault? Let me rephrase that: Does the fact that she is not a virgin automatically rule out the possibility that she might still have been harassed? One last try: Is a non-virgin not subject to rape?

Then the enigmatic general ended his pearls of wisdom with the declaration that all the examined women were not virgins anyway. This looked like his way of absolving himself and his men of any blame through proving that they were right about those women who camp with men overnight. It was also as if he was saying that they are not worth the commotion made around them by activists and human rights groups and as if he assumed that as long as a woman is not a virgin she wouldn’t be hurt by such a brutal procedure and wouldn’t feel the slightest bit of humiliation at having her clothes taken off by force and standing stark naked in front of a group of spectators as the hands of one of them find their way into her body. That is why he owes them no apology, which of course would not have been the case had the state of the girls or a few of them turned out to be contrary to their expectations. I’m glad the girls were as “unclean” as he guessed they would be because otherwise the pangs of conscience he would have suffered would have been intolerable.

In making such sorry statements, I believe the general has put himself in a situation where he is compared to that pro-Mubarak Egyptian actor who said in a TV interview that the sit-in of Tahrir Square is only about male and female protestors having sex and doing drugs. The spat of indignation this actor stirred is not at all different from the reaction elicited by the general’s shameful confessions with the exception that the general is in a much worse situation since he is part of the army, which is credited for refusing to crush the protests and for choosing to side with the revolutionaries and which is currently in charge of the country. Egyptians have decided to boycott all the actor’s movies, but how can they take a similar action with the army?

The general also seems to come from the same school as Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh who said that the pro-democracy protests his country is witnessing are against Islamic principles because men and women “march” together as they call for the fall of the regime. Of course, the wise general can argue that marching is not like “tenting,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if he does that tomorrow. After all, a twisted logic has logic of its own!

The Supreme Council of Armed Forces denied “allegations” on virginity tests when the issue was first raised by Amnesty International and still denies after the general made his astounding remarks, but the testimony of the girls, who were also beaten, tied up, and called “prostitutes,” remains the most credible story for the public that has for quite a while been trying to overlook violations made by the army. For the majority of Egyptian activists, the virginity tests story is in line with the violent clampdown on several peaceful protests calling for speeding up reforms and the trial of civilians in military courts.

All have the same message: our patience is wearing thin so stay at home and let us do our work. If this is the case, then let me tell you that they couldn’t have chosen a worse and more humiliating way of saying it.

In February 2011, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said the Egyptian revolution is bound to change not only the region, but also the entire world. “Today, with your voices, blood and steadfastness, you are retrieving the dignity of the Arab people; the dignity which was humiliated by some rulers of the Arab world for decades,” he told Egyptian revolutionaries.

In January 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of Davos after a heated debate with Israeli President Shimon Peres over Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza and after giving a speech slamming the Hebrew state for the atrocities committed against civilians in the strip and accusing the rest of the world of cowardice and inaction.

In May 2010, the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara led a humanitarian aid convoy heading to Gaza to defy the Israeli blockade on the strip and was attacked in international waters by Israeli Naval Forces, which resulted in the death and injury of several Turkish nationals.

In January 2011, Erdogan declared his support of the Egyptian revolution, warning the former president that he is not immortal, and asking him to step down. “No government can survive against the will of its people,” he said emphatically.

Throughout all this time, Egyptians were watching with a mixture of astonishment and fascination as they saw other leaders in the region taking such a firm and honorable stance in support of the Palestinian cause, which the Egyptian regime had technically abandoned in favor of catering to Israel’s “security concerns” and abiding by the United States’ rules of strategic partnership. While Egypt was placing one hurdle after another in every chance Palestinian factions had to reach reconciliation, Hezbollah fighters were dying on the Israeli border to liberate Southern Lebanon and Turkish activists were risking their lives to break the blockade on Gaza, Egyptian authorities closed the Rafah crossing, gave the Egyptian citizenship to children born to Egyptian mothers except if the father is Palestinian, and approved of—or at least never openly objected to—the killing of civilians in Gaza. So whereas Egypt had Mubarak, Lebanon had Hassan Nasrallah and Turkey had Mr. Erdogan.

Putting aside the first’s “suspicious” ties with Iran and what they imply as far as Shiite infiltration is concerned or speculations about Hezbollah’s involvement in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and also putting aside rumors about second’s keenness to restore the “glories” of the Ottoman Empire and apprehensions of the way his Islamist tendencies might undermine the only secular state in the region and which constitutes a pattern several liberal intellectuals look up to, the two men have for the past couple of years been hailed as heroes in Egypt even by those who had strong reservations on their ideologies or internal policies. The “heroism” bestowed by Egyptians upon Messrs. Nasrallah and Erdogan, from my own point of view, was emotional rather than political, for both men provided them with an example they have not seen for years, particularly since Mubarak came to power since even Nasser and Sadat were looked upon as heroes in some way or another.

The comparison between Messrs. Erdogan and Nasrallah might seem far-fetched for many since one is the prime minister of his country while the other is the leader of a militia specialized in guerilla warfare and labeled terrorist by several world power, yet let me point out that within the context of the resentment Egyptians felt for their president for his subservience to the U.S. and Israel made all those demarcations fall and rendered the two men simply “brave,” “honest,” and “strong.”

The protests in Egypt ended with the toppling of the regime and we all became one happy family—the freedom fighters—and the two “great” men were sometimes even cited as role models of the Middle East people’s ability to rise against injustice and put an end to tyranny. Then came quite an unexpected sequel—the Syrians followed suit. Are you familiar with the Jekyll and Hyde story? I bet now you are!

In May 2011, Hassan Nasrallah rejected the sanctions to be imposed on the Syrian regime, whose endless merits he kept enumerating, probably on the grounds that the killing of hundreds of peaceful protestors does not call for such a harsh action and definitely because it is an American and Israeli ploy—not sure if using the Western conspiracy card can work here. He also called upon the Syrian people to support their president and he even said why they should do so: unlike other Arab leaders Bashar al-Assad is serious about implementing political reform. It is just that those protestors are not giving him the chance. Oh! That makes a lot of sense. Now I can see why he’s killing them.

In a not-so-subtle reference to protestors as saboteurs, Mr. Nasrallah said Syrians should “preserve” their country, and in a not-at-all-subtle menacing remark he added that they should preserve the “ruling regime.” What if they don’t is something he didn’t tackle, possibly because the answer is known and has been implemented since the protests started, only it will be on a much bigger scale if that warning is not heeded.

Also in May 2011, Mr. Erdogan reiterated—in case his earlier statements were overlooked or misunderstood or most probably thought of as absolute gibberish—his support for Bashar al-Assad who, he said, is currently working on meeting his people’s demands. He even went as far as claiming that he is indeed a popular leader: “I see the people’s love for Bashar al-Assad each time I visit Syria.” Looks like he and Nasrallah study from the same textbook for the later said almost the exact same thing: “The majority of the Syrian people still support the regime and believe in President Bashar al-Assad.” Where is the problem then? If the president and his people seem to be enjoying an open-ended honeymoon, who is protesting? And would any of the gentlemen care to let us know what he thinks of the torture and killing of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb? Maybe later… when they have time… or when, and if, they have something to say…

I don’t think it is important now to use clichés like double standards, hypocrisy, and the prioritization of interests over any ethical or humane considerations because all this has been said over and over in different situations, especially by those very same men in reference to the United States, Israel, and the European Union. I am not also sure if it is important to investigate the motives behind this utterly shocking change of heart or mind or whatever. I only want to say that if—as is apparently the case nowadays —part of the job description of a politician (my deep apologies to Mandela and Gandhi and all those who remained the pride of their people and the whole world in life or death) is manipulating the truth and twisting facts and sanctioning the bloodshed of unarmed civilians and endorsing despotic regimes when common interests are at stake, then it is better for all of them to do so in silence and to refrain from issuing chivalrous statements in defense of democracy and in support of human rights and from lashing out at rulers—who are not friends or allies of course—who violate any of those much-cherished values.

Wouldn’t both Mr. Nasrallah and Mr. Erdogan been in a slightly better position now that they support the Syrian regime had they not repeated those empty slogans about Palestine or Egypt? In fact, there is a double benefit in that. They would not be as loathed as they are now since being always the devil is one thing and being the devil now when a couple of minutes ago a halo popped out of your head is another. Let them just stay silent so they won’t be faced by those waves of anger and this spat of disgust. They better become like Hitler—Nazi all through—and always bear in mind that no one seemed to have been shocked when Stalin starting killing members of his own Communist Party or when Slobodan Milosevic turned out to be the mastermind of the Bosnian genocide campaign.

Instead of bearing the weight of the masks and the health hazards this might entail on the skin and the respiratory system, they should have left their faces bare so that we could have seen the malicious grins and the sly eyes from the start. The effect of the sudden removal of the mask is traumatic for both the one who wears the mask and those who witness the taking off process, so why bother? In The Phantom of the Opera, Christine insisted on seeing the Phantom’s face and when she did, it was the beginning of the end, for she realized how repulsed she will always be and he realized she will never be his. Had he deposed of the mask before he first met her, they would certainly not have lived happily ever after, but at least each of them would have known where he/she stands and both would have been spared the shock that accompanies the discovery.

In Egypt, we refer to an insolent person as one with “a bare face.” Well, that is how it is supposed to be from now on. Better insolent than hypocrite! Masks have become démodé and faces are back this summer… so better stay as “stylish” as you are always known to be!

Being a creature who loves the sun and loathes nothing more than darkness, grey skies, and cloudy mornings, I could never grasp the idea of having your death triggered by exposure to light, the very source of life and vitality and everything that gives you power to survive. As a child, I was extremely disturbed by those scenes not because they frightened me, but rather because the concept of death by light seemed too absurd to be even mythologically plausible. When I started crossing the threshold of that black-and-white world and took my first steps into the realm of the grey, I started viewing the matter from a totally different angel and gradually the association between death and light became not only good material for folktales, but also turned out to be amongst the main components of the essence of reality.

They say that one of the things that causes a baby to scream the moment it is pulled out to the world is the fact that its eyes are forced to encounter something that is the total opposite of the place it called home for the past nine months. Yet as it discovers that it is here to stay, that other “lit” place gradually becomes the normal and darkness the exception. They also say people who are born blind then restore their eyesight when they are adults find it extremely hard to cope, much harder than the baby because in this case their stay at the “womb” had been unpredictably extended. So, what does a blind man do if he tries to cross the street right after he is able to see? He will most probably be run over by some speeding car. And what if he drives a car? He will most probably run some passerby over. He will either end up dead or in jail… in addition of course to the emotional damage triggered by failure to adapt to an environment that should from now on be the his one and only world. There is also the feeling of reaching the point of no return. Is he going to pull an Oedipus act and gouge his eyes to get rid of this ordeal once and for all? No, he won’t simply because the temptation of having firsthand experience with the objects he has only been hearing about is too overwhelming. The newcomer to the world of shapes and colors is too curious to ruin the chance of satisfying this obsessive instinct. Do you remember what curiosity did to the cat? So, he would rather risk his life or that of others than give up such a priceless “bounty.”

Since it saw the “dark” in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has been almost exclusively an underground organization not in the sense that its presence was not known or acknowledged, but rather in the way it has operated and the secrecy with which it has always shrouded its activities—past, present, and future.

Defining the Muslim Brotherhood is as hard as trying to predict what they’re up to. The group’s involvement in politics does not make it a political party proper, and parliamentary elections provide the best demonstration. Because their group was always referred to as “banned,” Muslim Brothers only ran as independents even though they posted the slogan “Islam is the solution” on their banners and even though the candidates’ affiliation was known to any Egyptian with the slightest knowledge of the political scene. They are also not a purely social movement despite their involvement in several charity projects and not purely religious despite listing preaching and the revival of Islamic principles as its main goals.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a peculiar mixture of all those, and this is part of the mystery with which it has always been endowed since Hassan al-Banna—himself quite enigmatic—decided that the Quran and Sunna should be the “sole” reference of individuals, society, and state.

The several question marks that surround the Muslim Brotherhood are, for me, basically due to the fact that since its inception no one really managed to get straight answers about the ideology—other than the declared religious one—on which the group was formed. Are they violent? They say they are not, yet several bombings and assassinations were attributed to them and words like “jihad” and “death for God” do come in the group’s manifesto. Do they believe in equality among all Egyptian citizens? They insist they do—they even named their new party Justice and Freedom—yet they opposed in the agenda they drafted a couple of years ago having women or Copts run in presidential elections. Are they hostile to non-Islamic cultures? They claim they are not, yet al-Banna, who they still regard as their main source of inspiration, saw Western influence as the reason for the “corruption” of Egyptian and other Muslim societies.

For a little less than a century, those questions remained unanswered and Egyptians seemed to have gotten used to the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood will always remain like The Scarlet Pimpernel, and some even gave up trying hard to figure out what they want, how they work, or how influential they are. Part of this growing indifference, I guess, was due to the fact that the regime had always had its eyes peeled and gazing and popping out for the group whose members spent more time in jail more than at home and had more money confiscated than spent. So, everybody knew that regardless of what it wants or plans to do, it is only within the space the regime allows it that the Brotherhood acts. A group that adopts secrecy as its modus operandi is pushed several more miles under the ground by a regime that suppresses any threat to its hegemony… perfect recipe for a full-fledged mystery!

The revolution gave the Muslim Brotherhood the first chance ever to shed off the two shades of darkness with which it had been enveloped—the voluntary and the imposed. Now that all Egyptians were “set free,” the Muslim Brothers saw no reason why they should stay in the dark while everyone else is coming to the surface and basking in the long-stolen light. In fact, they must have assumed they should have the lion’s share in the newly released rays owing to the fact that they had been the most ruthlessly drenched in pitch-blackness. It was then that the real farce started.

Breaking the decades-long ban on public appearances, Muslim Brothers have suddenly become the daily guests of every single show on state TV and privately owned satellite channels, the keynote speakers in scores of seminars and conferences, and the most requested preachers in nation-wide religious sermons. That was it! The once blind man threw the window shutters open the moment he knew he could see.

Throughout their history, members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been used to talking to one another, and they seemed to have never had a problem in that simply because they shared similar beliefs and worked toward the same goals. They have not seen the shock their words can elicit nor have they realized how much their statements constitute a flagrant offence to anyone who does not belong to their group or how their fiery rhetoric betrays an absolute lack of savvy when it comes to winning support outside the circle of their original followers.

A couple of days ago, I saw one of the best-known Brothers on TV lecturing hundreds, maybe thousands, of people and asserting in what sounded to me like a declaration of war the impossibility of removing the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt’s political scene and referring to Hassan al-Banna as the one and only savior of Islam. He then slammed “seculars” and “heretics” who oppose the establishment of an Islamic state. The highlight of the speech was his attack on Brotherhood men who marry women from outside the group and who he basically labeled as “lacking manhood.”

The speech was not the worst part; his attempt to defend it was. When asked by the host of a popular talk show about the reason for insisting that Brothers have to marry Sisters, he replied—thinking he is making things better—that the group does not raise its “chaste” female members so that men can marry another women “from the street.” Regardless of the fact that he refers to women from outside the group as unworthy—that’s the mildest way to put it—and that they don’t deserve the honor of becoming the Brothers’ wives, the way he talked about Sisters was in fact extremely offensive. I, for one, was made to feel he is a barn owner who breeds cattle for sale. Now, time for the biggest faux pas he made on air: he swore to God that he had no idea who the other guest—a liberal writer who slammed his statements and labeled them “fascist”—was. When the host insisted that he was told in advance and faced him with the fact that he “had taken the Lord’s name in vain,” he grew nervous and was on the verge of leaving the studio.

I was surprised to see my fury at the man’s unbelievable tactlessness and his absolute disregard of all Egyptians who do not subscribe to his ideologies was tinged with a spec—a little one—of pity. I have never been a fan of the Muslim Brotherhood and I am a staunch proponent of the civil state and a stauncher opponent of religious parties and the exclusionist agenda that comes with the package, yet as much as I detested every word the man said, I could clearly see a perfect example of self-destruction.

While assuming he was out to score a victory for the Brotherhood, he was only making a fool of himself and the group and with his own hands giving Egyptians a very good reason to dislike him and all his likes. He might not have done that out of malice, yet his inexperience as far as public statements are concerned and his cluelessness of the diplomacy required for such situations came out in the nastiest form ever. Yes, I felt slightly sorry for him because suddenly he was required to use tools with which he is not equipped in the first place, and he, consequently, emerged as a lousy actor hit by rotten tomatoes after the first line.

The euphoria of toppling the regime had an intoxicating effect on the Brotherhood and, therefore, did not allow them to reflect on the possible scenarios of their instant emergence from six feet under. They thought that now that they have the chance to speak, the whole crowd will applaud, yet they forgot to take some oration courses… they thought the stage is clear for them to deliver a monologue that will drench the theater in the tears of the moved audience, but they forgot that this is a multi-actor play.

I asked myself what would happen if vampires were gradually subjected to light instead of being overwhelmed by a flood of destructive rays. After dwelling for a long time on what I like to call “mythological probability”—myths have to be credible even if in a different way, you know—I found out that they would still not be saved. They will just undergo a gradual annihilation simply because their bodies are not designed for the light. They will be left with the option of staying under the ground if they opt for survival or coming above the surface if they opt for suicide. The most powerful of genetic mutation is needed to change this, one of the type that makes cats grow beaks or ducks become beasts of burden. Sad, but true!

A couple of years later, I studied the Sykes-Picot Agreement in school and it made things much more complicated for me, first because it proved that those lines are not God-sent and that like they were “drawn,” they can be “withdrawn,” and second because it baffled me a great deal as to who decides to draw and why. I went back to my mom, and I could see she realized that the previous answer would no longer be satisfactory, so she tried to explain to me that in the world of politics it is always the stronger party that decides. When I said that this is unfair, she shrugged her shoulders again—I have to admit this got on my nerves—and said, “Life is not fair, so imagine what politics is like.” She didn’t realize that at the time I had not known what the word “politics” means, yet I grew up considering it the most malignant of practices on earth because it gives people with power the ability to confine those with less or no power to lines that look so suffocating and crippling. We later studied the difference between natural and political borders and that confirmed my idea. If the border is a mountain, a lake, or a forest, then this is “natural,” yet if it is a line on a map translated into a checkpoint, barbed wire, or a miles-long fence, it is apparently the most “unnatural” way ever to determine the relationship between human beings.

The restrictions those borders place on human interaction were much clearer to me when I first knew that to leave my country, I need a permission from the country to which I am heading and that granting this permission depends on whether your destination is willing to receive you or not. Coming from the Middle East, I need a visa to go almost anywhere on the face of earth. I used to joke with my foreign friends when they asked if, for example, I needed a visa to Honduras or the Comoros Islands and I would reply, “I guess I need a visa to go to Alexandria.” When freedom of entry was granted to citizens of the EU members states, I couldn’t help but admire the concept of falling barriers—I felt that same sensation that overtook me when the Berlin Wall was pulled down—and with more countries joining, my admiration for the continent grew stronger. True reservations were voiced by conservatives over the unemployed of the impoverished East flocking to the prosperous West and, through offering cheap labor, competing with the natives of those countries which are themselves not devoid of economic problems. Their argument is not totally invalid, but they could have chosen to look at it from a different perspective and in a more far sighted manner: Yes, some serious issues might arise from the removal of travel restrictions between countries that do not share a similar social, financial, or political makeup, yet dissolving the barriers is the only way toward seeing these dissimilarities gradually fade and reaching the point of making no distinction between what is still categorized as East Europe and West Europe.

I am not going to go babbling about how unfortunate it is that not a sign of a similar system to be applied in the Arab world is visible because this—with all the implications it carries—is not what is preoccupying me at the moment. I would rather talk about how I felt when the border with Gaza was finally opened and the siege on the 1.5 million inhabitants of the strip was at last lifted. First, I have to say that I had so many mixed feelings upon hearing the news. I wasn’t sure who exactly I should be happy for, the Palestinians or the Egyptians, and I wasn’t even sure whether I should be happy in the first place.

Having been always haunted by the idea of barriers, the Separation Wall that Israel built in the West Bank felt like a thorny collar around my neck, and every time I read about it or saw it I was overwhelmed by those claustrophobic fits that made me feel the breath I was taking at that moment was my last. But after all, it was Israel tightening the noose around Palestinians—quite understandable, though utterly unjustifiable. Yet when it is Egypt doing the exact same thing on the other side, this will never be understandable and is, it goes without saying, absolutely unjustifiable. The Egyptian regime’s compliance with the Israeli manual was for me a flagrant violation of the natural order—something along the lines of incest—and the degree with which Egypt had throughout the years contributed to the suffering of Gazans was nothing less abominable than fratricide. I don’t think I need to describe how it felt when reports came out that the Egyptian government did in one way or another condone the 2008 war on Gaza or how fed up all Egyptians were becoming whenever they heard the sickening official statements about arms smuggling and Hamas rocket attacks and the destabilization of national security.

Of course, I felt happy for the Palestinians who, for a change, will no longer feel stranded in that 360-square-kilometer prison in which they and their offspring seemed to have been doomed to a life sentence, sometimes the capital punishment. Nevertheless, my happiness for Egypt is… I wouldn’t say greater, but rather more overpowering. For years, I had tried to come to terms with the shame of having my country give up on the only people who really deserved our material and moral support—no, rather for whom providing support is our national and ethical duty—and of seeing Egypt praised in Israel for its role in safeguarding the Jewish state’s interests. I remember how bitter I felt when several non-Egyptians, including Arabs, I met would scoff at my pro-Palestinian proclamations and retort with phrases like, “It is indeed very obvious how Egypt supports Palestine!” or “How about the white-and-blue flag that flutters over the Nile in Cairo?” Even when I explained that the regime does not represent the people, some would say, “And what are the people doing to prove otherwise?” I wanted to disappear.

Well, now I don’t. On the contrary, I want so much to appear and lift my head up high and say that my homeland is no longer letting me down and that this revolution was not only for the people who live within that space on the map that occupies the northeastern part of Africa, but was an embracement of all the values of freedom and humanity and altruism—ones whose meanings we were on the verge of deleting from our disgraced memory. Let me also add sovereignty.

I am happy for myself, for Egyptians, and for the revolution, but I am not so happy for the painfully long time justice takes to be served. My elation over the restoration of a bond that was unnaturally and brutally severed is unfortunately marred by the agony I still feel for those who were killed, injured, rendered homeless, or will live forever with an irreversible emotional damage as a direct or indirect result of the former regime’s policies. The flood of pride that drenched me head to toe the moment I learnt that both Egyptians and Palestinians have started taking the first little steps toward liberation has not yet enabled me of snatching that Scarlet Letter that is almost now engraved in my flesh. My sadness over the fact that we—apparently in such situations no one makes a distinction between regime and people—had been a major source of misery for Palestinians turned out to be too chronic to heal with the first tablet of pain killer. For now, I am grateful that the first signs of recovery are starting to show and that gives me the courage to display more perseverance during the coming phases of the seemingly long convalescence.

I don’t think that the opening of the Rafah crossing and the heartbreaking spectacle of the cheering Gazans who are finally able to make it to long overdue medical appointments, years-late family reunions, or even a one-day supplies’ shopping trip will effect a change to that map I have been staring at since I learnt to use my eyes. But as I grew taller and was able to take a closer look at the colored territories, I realized that maps are not static and that two Germanys became one and one Soviet Union became 15, and thousands of years ago there might have been a continent called Atlantis.

Like Palestine, a map is not a jigsaw puzzle that only has one way to assemble … nor is it some cake made to the taste of a bunch of hungry stomachs… it is a creature as throbbing with life as the zillions of cultures, races, and languages it houses and as open-armed as the oceans that embrace it. I will go back to my map and with my eyes scan all its territories and as I do so will erase all those lines that had bothered me for all those years. I will think of the globe as Atlas bore it on his shoulders. Then I will bring a magnifying glass and bring it closer until I see “the promised land” opening up like a heart-warming geyser. At that moment, I will extend my hand and call in a softest, yet the most forceful, whisper, “Attraversiamo!”

Before satellite dishes made their way into almost all Egyptian houses and we were forced to watch state TV, there were times when the entire news would be a report on a visit she made to this hospital or that school with special focus on how people in either place enumerate the countless merits of having her in their lives and how much they owe her. The phrase “Under the auspices of Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak,” in both its written and spoken forms, had over the years become the “In God we trust” of Egypt. In fact, the first lady did gradually acquire several holy-like attributes that reminded me of the La Virgin de Guadalupe, the Mexican edition of Virgin Mary and who, besides her traditional religious role, serves as communal mother to whom all the Mexican people turn for comfort, advice, and blessing. Apologies due to the venerable Virgin!

When the regime was toppled and the halo was snatched from the “patrona” by the power of the people, a nationwide campaign to obliterate any proof that she had ever existed took me back to the post-Akhenaton Eighteenth Dynasty and the vociferous attempts by the Amun-ists to deface all traces of the Tel al-Amarna epoch. Apologies due the monotheistic pharaoh and to Atun!

A few days after the president stepped down, dozens of schools were rendered nameless as their signs were pulled out or, in case they were too big or too difficult to remove—like the lady seemed to have been—you would see big white or black paint stains over her name and/or face. A lawsuit was indeed filed to have Mrs. Mubarak’s name removed from all state-owned facilities, yet before the ruling—which came in favor of the people’s demand—was out, the procedure was already being carried out in what I perceived as a forceful reminder that revolutions do not wait for official approvals.

Removal of names and pictures constituted the start of a long list of steps to eradicate the legacy of a much-hated regime and revolutionaries decided to begin with that not because it was the most important, but rather the easiest and fastest in addition, of course, to the message such action delivered. Moving from the symbolic to the practical, it was time to embark on a more critical purge, one that involves the substantial evidence of the lady’s hegemony over the country’s social and political scene during the past 30 years. It was the turn of what came to be known as the “Laws of Suzanne,” a series of civil status edicts that regulate a number of family matters and which, the majority of Egyptians now argue, were only authorized by parliament because the “hanem”—the former president’s wife nickname and Arabic for “lady”—wanted it that way. Those laws, rumor had it, had nothing to do with the welfare of Egypt or the Egyptians and were only meant to serve Mrs. Mubarak’s personal ambitions. Some say the laws provided her with the prestige she wanted in international conferences and especially with other first ladies, with whom she was able to brag about her role in advancing women’s rights in a society generally known to be male-oriented. “Imagine the challenges I face,” she must have told them. Others even go as far as attributing the changes she introduced to her keenness on being considered for the Nobel Prize for Peace. This might explain the grudges the whole Mubarak family harbored against Mohamed ElBaradei—prior, of course, to his emergence as a staunch opponent to the regime and a potential presidential candidate.

Two specific laws are most associated with the former first lady and currently under attack and facing annulment demands: Unconditional divorce, in which a woman is empowered to obtain a divorce without needing to go through the routine legal procedures and without having to provide reasons for her decision provided that she forfeits her financial right, and visitation rights, in which a divorced father is only allowed three hours per week with his children in a public place and under the supervision of a court official. It took me a while to find out what is common between the two laws in question until I realized that it is definitely men who want to revoke them, yet this doesn’t make the two laws nor the possible reasons for the criticism leveled at them similar in anyway.

In the first case, it is obvious that Egyptian men, raised to believe they are superior to women, are disconcerted by the control given to wives over their marital life and by the fact that they were robbed of one of the powers they had always thought was exclusive to the male sex. Let me point out here that this law does not of course deprive men from the right to divorce their wives. It is just the humiliation of not being the sole decision-maker as far as the continuation or termination of the marriage is concerned. Let me also clarify that this law had existed since the dawn of Islam and was condoned by the prophet, so even for those who use religion as a pretext to suppress women have no case at all. Now, with all the arguments for cancelling unconditional divorce rendered absolutely invalid, those men have been offered a new leeway on a silver platter—the revolution.

There is no point going through how I feel about exploiting a noble cause for furthering a personal end neither am I going to elaborate on how the law, as mortifying as it is for men, is not that fair to the woman who opts for unconditional divorce since it deprives her of the financial rights to which she becomes entitled upon divorce. I would rather ask those who want to see the law go one question: Should we cancel all the laws issued or proposed or authorized by Mr. Mubarak or any members of his family or any of the former regime’s officials? What would happen if you had benefited from one or more of the laws approved throughout the past three decades? Are you willing to give that up, too?

I would also like to ask them another question which I allowed myself to borrow from a dear friend of mine and which, to me, made so much sense: How about the sons of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers who were granted the Egyptian citizenship, also upon instructions from the first lady? Should they be stripped of that now? Or are we even being selective with the “Laws of Suzanne”?

The major difference between the first and second law from my point of view is that the men protesting against the latter have a legitimate demand that does not look like it is driven by some blind desire to prove who wears the pants. I am a feminist, and I do admit that women in Egypt still have a long way to go and that any semblance of gender equality has been possible mainly in upper-middle classes, yet I find the law in flagrant violation of fathers’ rights. I am vehemently against the way it assumes that all men are out to retaliate on their ex-wives and/or kidnap their children and that they all do not perform their duties towards their children and therefore deserve to be punished. According to several women interviewed on the issue, the father would do his best to tarnish the mother’s image in front of the children and would have a better chance to do so if he gets to spend more time with them. Is there a reason the mother would not do the exact same thing? Isn’t there such a thing as an incompetent mother? And don’t mothers sometimes lose custody for being unfit to raise kids?

I believe that gender equality does not mean being biased to women and I am totally for granting divorced parents equal rights when it comes to spending time with their children as long as none of them violates the ethics of partnership. Yet again I worry about the rationale used to abolish the law and which puts the men who make sense in the same box with those who don’t. The “Laws” argument mars the cause they are fighting for, and which I believe is a very noble one, and renders them subject to the same accusation hurled at the first group. There is no way I can be as unfair as to claim that they are intentionally dwarfing a sublime patriotic action that is bound to change the course of history into a tool for settling personal disputes or reducing the rampant corruption from which the country had suffered for 30 years to a couple of family status laws favored by the former president’s wife. Yet, without realizing it, they are facing the risk of joining the ranks of male chauvinists who are purely driven by an obsessive desire to maintain the balance of power from which they apparently derive their self-esteem and assert their flawed notion of manhood.

Like her husband and two sons, Suzanne Mubarak has indeed caused the country a great deal of damage and there is no doubt that the interest of the country has never been among her priorities. Bringing her to justice is a prerequisite for the completion of the revolution, yet taking advantage of the anti-regime sentiments that have been prevalent in the country since the start of the revolution in order to garner support for demands that are in themselves legitimate weakens the cause, and the sympathy it might have initially gained will gradually fade away.

True, the law was and still is associated with “Suzanne,” yet capitalizing on this association to get it annulled only benefits those who do not have a cause and were only able to come up with one just because an umbrella under which they can do so suddenly descended upon them from the high heavens.

Let’s go back home and celebrate our two-day revolution that made the miracle of forced the three-decade ruler to decide not run then make it look like this was his original intention to save face. “He couldn’t stay against the will the people. He realized he is no longer wanted” some even went as far as saying. I am not going to say how emotional the Egyptian people are and how gullible they can be, and I am not going to go through how much several of them were touched to see his health deteriorating and his voice shaking because this wasn’t what it was all about.

True, several people sympathized with him, but even many of his staunchest opponents who would have accepted no alternative to his immediate resignation, ones who are known to be immune against all kinds of blackmail, had for a few moments thought that his declaration was quite an achievement. “What? Are we going to wait till September? Hell no!” was the reaction after those moments were over. “He won’t run, but his son will,” was the reaction of the moments after the moments. “Not running my a**! Of course he will. The likes of him will cling to power till their last breath” was when obscenity started becoming the inevitable reaction.

A similar scenario happened when the former interior minister was handed 12 years in jail for financial corruption. “Justice is finally served” and “for the first time in Egypt, a top official as powerful as Habib al-Adly is tried and sentenced to jail” were the typical reactions you would find on social networking websites and media outlets. Then came another reaction that was seemingly no different from the first ones, but in reality was the reason for igniting its reverse counterpart: “Now, the martyrs can rest in peace for the murderer who killed them is now paying for his crimes.” “But wait a minute… he is in fact going to jail for money laundry. You got to be kidding me!” Suddenly, the verdict that was heralded as one of the revolution’s most crucial achievements turned into a shameful setback that started drawing angry reactions from all over the country. “12 years? Is the new version of the capital punishment nowadays?” “What logic on earth is it to press corruption charges against the monster who ordered firing at the peaceful protestors and was the direct reason for the death of many of them?”

The list went on endlessly as the crowds cheered when the former president was placed under hospital arrest then started demanding that he be put on jail with the rest of the “gang” and when the millions his wife decided to waive to the state were welcome as a partial rescue of the crippled economy then it was made obvious that this was nothing but a bluff to evade prosecution… same with incarcerated business tycoons-cum-political hawks who offered skyrocketing sums in return for amnesty. A wave of enthusiasm also swept the country when the army started referring “thugs” and regime “remnants” to military courts, then all woke up to the revelation that activists and peaceful protestors were placed in the same ranks and cries of indignation at the principle of having military trials for civilians regardless of which category they belong to and regardless of who exactly decides who belongs to which category started resonating everywhere.

News of sentencing to death a policeman proven guilty of killing 18 peaceful protestors and injuring another 15 on January 28, aka Friday of Fury, unleashed another spat of mixed reactions and again put into question the validity of similar decisions that seem to be meant to distract and/or pacify the public rather than see justice duly and properly served. Local and international media dubbed the sentence, the first of its kind since the start of the revolution, a “historic” one that demonstrates the state’s unrelenting determination to hunt down each and every one of those criminals who murdered unarmed civilians in cold blood. The sentence, they added, constitutes a crucial step towards making the Egyptian people rest assured that the blood of their compatriots was not spilt in vain. The euphoria that accompanied the news was heightened by the fact that the defendant is not a high-ranking policeman—he is, in fact, not strictly a policeman, but rather some kind of assistant and not a graduate of the Police Academy—which, many argue, shows how all members of the former regime’s notorious security system, regardless of their position. Well, I guess they meant that nobody would have taken notice had the suspect’s name not been mentioned at all and had he not been tried.

As usual, the cheers of joy faded into mumbles of frustration as the excited crowds took some time to reflect on what such a verdict may imply. Turns out one little piece of information was lost to the recipients of the news or rather overshadowed by this kind of ecstasy that makes you sometimes unable to see the little, yet perhaps extremely critical, details. The man was tried in absentia… indeed, he was not there to be interrogated, bring witnesses, or tell his version of the story… he is at large in fact and his whereabouts are still unknown. The culprit’s family staged protests in front of the Ministry of Justice demanding to know on what basis their son was handed the capital punishment out of all sentences when he did not present himself to the court and wanted the investigation into the shootings reopened. The family’s concerns are now voiced by a large portion of Egyptians who are questioning the legality and fairness of the verdict. Contrary to the argument that prevailed upon the announcement of the verdict, the fact that the defendant is a low-ranking policeman casts more doubt on both the trial and the ruling. The scapegoat strategy, first adopted when Mubarak sent to jail several top officials and business tycoons in the hope of fooling the protestors into thinking that reforms are being implemented, reemerged as several questions were asked: Why start with leveling charges against someone who is nowhere to be found while dozens of his colleagues are already in custody and can be summoned to court right here and now? How did the court manage to verify that the defendant’s victims were indeed peaceful protestors and not thugs like the ones who attacked all police stations across the country? In other words, are we sure this was not an act of self-defense? How about reports that the police station in which this policeman worked was not among those that witnessed remarkable protests?

Now, time for the million-dollar question: The former minister of interior, the architect of all sorts of police brutality in the country and the number one culprit not only in killing protestors but in the entire post-Friday of Fury turmoil that saw prison gates opened and criminals given free hand to steal, terrorize, and rape… how come he is not being tried for the lives he took, the people he tortured, and the atrocities he committed over two decades against the citizens he was supposed to protect?

For those who are not familiar with the barbarities perpetrated by his Excellency and who do not want to get into too many details and waste so much time investigating the man’s horrendous curriculum vitae, just Google the name Khaled Said and let me know if you do not think he should have been hanged a million times for that only.

By the way, I am generally not a supporter of the capital punishment and I wish the day would come when it will be abolished in Egypt even though I realize how far-fetched that is. However, as long as the capital punishment is enforced then at least hand it to those who deserve it and not to those who are easier to sacrifice. Maybe this policeman deserves the punishment he got, but definitely not more than his superior and absolutely not before him.

If you set the gallows, make sure you think carefully before you decide who mounts them. Otherwise, we might fall into the trap of mock trials and summary executions which marred the noble cause of dozens of revolutions around the world and of which our blessed, bloodless revolution should always stay clear in order to remain one of the noblest and most peaceful in the history of mankind.

On October 6 of every year and for the past four decades, we would be bombarded with a series of patriotic films—the same ones every time—to commemorate the 1973 war in which the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal, restored the Sinai Peninsula, and defeated Israel. In those films, there is usually a love story and the protagonist—a soldier of course—is thought dead then suddenly comes back victorious and is united with his beloved in a “touching” scene that combines passionate longing with nationalistic zeal. Each of those movies would feature this protagonist and his comrades—usually his closest friend dies in his arms to show that war exacts a dear price even if it ends up in victory—crossing the canal in inflatable boats, pulling down the Bar Lev Line with water cannons, and finally raising the Egyptian flag on the usurped land. In the meantime, the lover/fiancée/wife would be glued to a radio that transmits blurred reports from the front and crying and praying and all the works. She might also volunteer to tend to the wounded in the hope of finding her man among them or meeting any of his friends—sometimes one of them would also be in love with her. Have you seen Pearl Harbor? Well, it’s more or less the same thing except that no one beats Ben Affleck’s ability to show no emotion whatsoever even if he is shot at, forced into the trenches, and captured by the formidable Samurai.

To cut a long story short, this was the only channel through which the Egyptian people had any contact—if it may be called so—with the army. It is true that the 1952 Revolution, which toppled the monarchy and established the Arab Republic of Egypt—which is what we are till now—was led by the Free Officers, which made it a military coup rather than a popular uprising, and all four presidents who had ruled ever since came from the army, yet Egypt did not really qualify as a military dictatorship. The despotic regime in Egypt was in no way similar to those of Latin America for example, where a military junta is the de facto ruler of the country and where it was the army that exercised absolute political control on both the domestic and the international levels. Since 1952, Egypt had had military rulers who made sure their authority was derived from their own individual power and not from their affiliation to the Armed Forces, most likely out of a sheer egoistic desire to have their star shine outside any collective entity that might overshadow their desire to remain the one and only symbol of the nation. If we have to give it a name, I would agree with analysts who regarded the system of government in Egypt as a personality cult dictatorship rather than a military rule.

Egyptians, therefore, never had the chance to have a proper interaction with the army and the only source of authority they dealt with on daily basis was the police, which in fact played the role of the junta as far as abuse of power, human rights violations, and suppression of personal freedoms are concerned. January 28, 2011, also called Friday of Fury, featured both the climax and the denouement of the decades-long saga of unmitigated brutality and ruthless repression, for whereas in the morning of that day, all police forces were mobilized like never before to crush the protests at any cost, by sunset not one single policeman was to be seen anywhere across the country. Yet, Egyptians were by no means able to celebrate the vanishing of one of their staunchest enemies because they were starting to realize that they were being “punished” for their “misconduct” and because at the time when cops were taking off their uniforms and heading back home for an “open vacation” as they were told by their superiors, prison cells were flung wide open one after the other and their inmates were given free rein in an abrupt shift from a Police State to a police-less combat zone.

It was then that the army made an appearance and it was also then that Egyptians started to feel they were not totally abandoned. Hence, the emotionally-charged reception of the soldiers who, being suddenly ejected from their barracks to a battlefield that does not in any way resemble the ones they are familiar with, were as baffled as the civilians, who without warning found themselves in the custody of the seemingly untouchable Herculeses they had only seen on screen and who came to rescue them from what appeared to be an inescapable Armageddon. That is why what would generally appear as a frightening spectacle, the country turning into a barrack, was a welcome relief and, believe it or not, a source of entertainment. For what I assume is unprecedented in history, people started mounting tanks and taking pictures with the soldiers and children seemed to confuse armored vehicles with Ferris wheels and donkey carts. Taking it for granted that the army is totally supporting them—therefore, overlooking the fact that the president is also head of the Armed Forces—protestors even felt free to write “Down with Mubarak” on those very same tanks and armored vehicles. And guess what? None of the soldiers intervened to stop this from happening. Chanting slogans that emphasized that the army and the people are “one” and “stand hand in hand” and so on not only revealed the people’s feeling towards their new saviors, but also served as an invitation for the army to quit its so-called “neutrality” and join the ranks of the revolutionaries. When this happened, the Armed Forces became the one and only national icon, in real life this time.

However, a blind date is a blind date and mishaps do happen, for the long time single man is not savvy enough to deal with women and the relationship-weary woman has learned that every man is guilty until proven innocent. Despite the patriotism for which it was hailed when it chose to side with the revolution and aid in the toppling of the regime and despite the magnanimity its marshals displayed when they refused to fire at the peaceful protestors, the army has in many occasions been accused of several offences—complicity with the former regime, violent repression of post-revolution protests, and laxity in penalizing subversive groups being the most prominent examples.

Questioning the army’s loyalty to the people goes back to February 2, the day the bloody confrontations known as “The battle of the Camel” took place in Tahrir Square between the revolutionaries and mercenary thugs of the then-incumbent regime. On that day, the army was accused of its inability to protect the protestors—tanks tightly surrounded the square and it was literally impossible for men armed with knives, whips, and Molotov cocktails to enter on board camels and horses unless the army had made way for them—and of still pledging allegiance to Mubarak’s regime despite “pretending” to side with the people’s demand to topple it. This incident also gave rise to countless apprehensions as the striking revolutionaries wondered if they would one day be the victims of another Tiananmen Square.

Nothing less than the actual toppling of the regime, which took place nine days after the notorious battle, would have quelled the fears of Egyptian youths and it actually did. As the Higher Council of Armed Forces took over and amid talk that it was the army that “forced” Mubarak to resign, another honeymoon started and prospects of a love story were starting to emerge for the newly acquainted couple.

Had relationships been that easy, the words “break up” and “divorce” would not have entered our dictionary. While for a long time the “hand in hand” chants resonated across the country and another glory was added to the army’s honorable record, things started to look bleak again shortly afterwards. While complicity with the regime was no longer a valid accusation, suspicion over the possibility of a deal struck between the army and the Mubaraks started undermining the restored confidence as the progenitors of the revolution demanded a justification for not bringing the former ruling family to justice at the time when dozens of senior officials were being detained pending trial. Even though the arrest of the two sons contributed to clearing the skies a little bit, keeping Mubarak in a hospital for health reasons and releasing his wife after pledging to waive her wealth to the state raised more questions about some kind of immunity granted to the couple prior to the president’s resignation. The announcement in an independent newspaper that Mubarak intends to apologize to the people in return for amnesty added fuel to the fire, and the army was accused of playing games with the people to gauge their reactions and prepare them for the “forgiveness” scenario. The fact that the military council later dismissed the story as groundless did not pacify the public who believed that its members only did so after seeing the furious reaction with which they news was met.

The eruption of sectarian clashes in several parts of Egypt served to further discredit the army, which was forcefully reprimanded by Copts and Muslims alike for its inability to clampdown on those responsible for burning churches and attacking Christians. Activists belonging to both faiths believe that the army is being too soft on Salafi groups, the main suspects in the latest turmoil, not only for not arresting those of them involved in igniting the strife, but also for sending Salafi clerics to places where these incidents took place in order to “pacify” both parties. The contrast between what is seen as “incompetent” or almost “nonexistent” intervention in the Muslim-Christian clashes while they were taking place on one hand and the violent repression of protests staged in front of the Israeli embassy in commemoration of the Nakba on the other triggered strong statements about the army being selective as to when and where it should pull the iron grip card. Speculations have reached their peak as many observers charged the army of dealing with national crises upon its whims and even the personal ideologies of its leaders.

Meanwhile, the army responses are as ambivalent as their actions and as their relationship with the people. While this is understood by many as prevarication, many others see it as confusion. The best description I have read till now about the army’s demeanor—or misdemeanor—since it took charge of the country was one by Egyptian columnist Galal Nassar who summarized the army’s problem in not knowing the difference between “running” and “ruling” the country.

I am not sure if this argument acquits or implicates the army, but it makes sense in all cases. Having been totally detached from the political scene and not going anywhere outside the battlefield at times of war and the barracks at times of peace, they were suddenly required to play president in a country rife with conflicts and plagued by numerous plights, let alone just emerging from a revolution, and were expected to manage civil matters with the same efficiency with which they did military ones. Maybe that was quite a lot to ask, but you can’t blame the people for asking either, and while the army accuses the people of impatience—and sometimes ingratitude even though not in so many words—the people feel that the state—in whichever form it takes—owes them a great deal.

A vicious circle it is. The man expects the woman to bear with him as he gropes his way through a type of relationship in which he has minimal experience, and the woman requires that the man does all what is in his capacity to restore her trust in the male sex, and both think the other is too focused on his/her own needs. She might accuse him of not showing enough interest for a long time and he might accuse her of being too paranoid for pretty much the same time, and while this process of incrimination is going on, they also have to remember that both of them might be knocked down by the hurricane that seems to get more menacing by the minute. So, it’s either they make their priority to take shelter together in some safe place where they can have the clarity of mind to reflect on their situation or they can engage in endless bickering until they are buried under heaps of rubble. Their choice!