You will find this intense political consciousness among the Egyptian people on every page of Egypt’s history, without exception. The intellectuals and politicians analyze everything based on theories and preconceived ideas, talk much, and take part in complex debates in which they always disagree, whereas ordinary people, even if they are less well educated, often have a sound political instinct that gives them shrewd insight into everything that happens, and they adopt the correct position with amazing ease. Forty years after the death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, we are still debating his mistakes and his achievements, whereas the Egyptian people gave their opinion when Abdel Nasser died and millions of Egyptians came out to attend his funeral. These simple people who sobbed like children in mourning for Abdel Nasser were well aware of all his mistakes and knew that he was responsible for a cruel defeat for Egypt and the Arab nation, but they also understood that he was a great leader with a rare commitment to his principles and that he had done his best and devoted his life to his country. When we intellectuals face a confusion of choices we must always listen to the people. Ordinary Egyptians are by no means rabble or riffraff who do not know their own best interests, as Egyptian officials say. On the contrary, they usually have an infallible compass by which they determine the correct political position. Many intellectuals may stray from the nationalist path and become accessories and propagandists for the despotic regime, and we should bear in mind that intellectuals who lose their way always start by despising the people. We can understand our country only if we understand the people, and we cannot understand the people unless we respect their abilities and their way of thinking, listen to their opinions and experiences, and deal with them not as creatures of deficient intelligence and competence who need us as mentors but as people who have experience of life and from whom we should learn.
In a few weeks parliamentary elections will begin and the regime has refused to provide any guarantees that the elections will be fair. It has refused to repeal the emergency law or to purge the electoral registers of the names of dead people (who always vote for the ruling party), and it has rejected judicial supervision and even international monitoring. All the indications confirm that the next elections will be rigged, like all previous elections. In such circumstances Egyptians decide to boycott elections and despite the regime’s desperate efforts the turnout is never more than 10 percent of the electorate. The question here is: Why don’t Egyptians go to the polls? In fact, when Egyptians boycott elections, it is not at all a sign of passivity, as the regime’s propagandists repeatedly say. It is a conscious decision, effective and sound. If the elections are rigged and it is impossible to prevent electoral fraud, then boycotting them is the right choice, because it prevents the regime from claiming that it represents the people it rules. That’s why the regime is so vociferous in urging Egyptians to take part in the coming elections. The scenario has been written and produced and all the roles have been assigned. All they need is a cast of extras for the show to begin. The Egyptian people are not at all passive; they have grown wise from experience accumulated over many centuries.
The evidence for this is that Egyptians are keen to take part in any credible elections. Last year I went to vote in the elections at the sports club I belong to and found crowds of club members who had come on their day off to stand in long lines to elect new board members. I had an idea and started asking the club members if they voted in parliamentary or presidential elections. Most of those I asked looked at me with scorn and said they never took part in government elections because they are rigged, and some of them said they were not registered to vote in the first place. The truth is as clear as the sun in Egypt: a despotic and oppressive regime, which has failed and which has monopolized power for thirty years by means of repression and fraud until Egypt has hit rock bottom in all spheres of life, is asking people to take part in rigged elections in order to obtain fraudulent and superficial legitimacy. So boycotting the coming elections is the proper position. Simple Egyptians will boycott the elections because they do not want official posts; they do not dream of becoming members of parliament, they do not have investments they are frightened of losing, and they do not have friendly relations with the security agencies.
Some weeks ago we were reading in the newspapers about debates in the political parties over whether to boycott the elections or take part. The question to ask here is: Is there a single guarantee that real elections will take place? Has the regime given any commitment not to rig them and, even if it did, has this regime ever met any of its commitments? What’s the point of any party going into elections when it knows in advance they will be rigged? They say they will take part in the elections in order to put the government to shame, but hasn’t the government been shamed enough times already? Besides, what are these parties and what have they done in recent decades for the millions of poor people? What have the parties done to prevent torture, repression, and corruption? The answer is zilch, nothing. Most of these parties are paper puppets on strings held by the regime. Some of the party leaders cooperate with the security agencies and some of them are such favorites of the regime (which they claim to oppose) that they are appointed members of the upper house of parliament. So their position is worthless if they take part in rigged elections in return for one or two seats in a parliament that has lost legitimacy.
It would be truly regrettable if the Muslim Brotherhood were implicated in taking part in rigged elections. It seems that the Brotherhood is destined never to learn from its mistakes. Anyone who reads the history of the Brotherhood will be amazed at the vast difference between its nationalist positions against foreign occupation and its attitudes toward despotism. The Brotherhood played an honorable and important role in the Palestine war of 1948, led the Egyptian resistance against the British in the Suez Canal towns in 1951, and set a fine example of sacrifice and courage. But, sadly, in most of its positions on domestic matters the Brotherhood has put the organization’s interests before the interests of the nation and has invariably stood on the side of despotism. It supported King Farouk and Prime Minister Ismail Sidki, the butcher of the people. It backed Abdel Nasser when he abolished parliamentary life. It supported President Anwar Sadat and overlooked his repressive measures. When it comes to the possibility of President Hosni Mubarak passing the presidency to his son, Gamal, some Muslim Brothers have made vague and ambiguous statements that can be read in conflicting ways. If the Brotherhood does take part in the coming elections, it will be giving this iniquitous regime a fraudulent legitimacy it desperately needs and will play the role of the wretched extra in a drama for which all Egyptians will pay the price.
Those who advocate for taking part in the elections fall into three groups: they are either simpletons who do not understand what is happening around them, people seeking office at any price, or stooges who receive their instructions from the regime and have to carry them out. Boycotting the coming elections is the correct position, which the Egyptian people will adopt, and so anyone who does take part will be acting in defiance of the will of the nation. When Egypt has real elections we will all take part, but for now, let’s leave them to act out their silly and boring drama alone, without extras.
Democracy is the solution.
September 9, 2010
THE PEOPLE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Our Advice to the Butcher
My family used to have an empty apartment in Mawardi Street in Sayyida Zeinab and I used to stay there to be alone while studying for exams at university. In that apartment I saw extraordinary vignettes of working-class Egyptian life.
Opposite us, on the second floor of a dilapidated old building, lived a butcher by the name of Mr. Galal, a stocky man with a fierce temper. He was fond of alcohol and every night he would drink the cheapest and deadliest varieties available. When he was drunk, he turned into a raging bull and as soon as he arrived home toward dawn everyone in the street would wake up to the screams of his wife calling out for help as he beat her mer
cilessly. Some of the residents, including me, sympathized with the poor woman and we would stand on the pavement opposite where we could see Mr. Galal’s room, shouting out good advice: “Don’t let the devil tempt you, Mr. Galal!” “It’s best to make peace, folks.”
The leader in these mediation attempts was “Uncle” Awad, the grain merchant, a thin man of more than seventy who was also a man of considerable wisdom and courage. One night Galal the butcher was arguing as usual with his wife, but this time the argument escalated and suddenly we saw him bring out a large knife. The sight of it glinting alarmed us as we stood on the pavement opposite, watching and trying to calm the man down. His wife’s cries broke the silence of the night: “Save me, people. He’s going to kill me.” Mr. Galal growled back, “I’ll finish you off. Say your last prayers.”
At this point Awad the grain merchant, with us behind him, rushed upstairs to the butcher’s apartment and began to pound on the door with such violence and insistence that in the end Mr. Galal had to come and open the door for us. We rushed inside, pulled the woman away from him, formed a circle around him with our bodies, and grabbed the knife from him. We started to calm him down and did not leave until we had reconciled the couple.
The next day the butcher came to “Uncle” Awad to complain. “Do you think it’s right to come between a man and his wife?” he asked.
“Of course it is, if he’s going to kill her,” Awad replied at once.
“Even if I kill her, she’s my wife and I can do what I like with her.”
“Of course not. How can you kill her and say you can do what you like?”
“I don’t allow anyone to interfere in my household.”
At that point Awad looked at the butcher long and hard, then calmly said, “If you don’t want anyone interfering in your household then you should show some self-respect.”
I remembered this incident while I was following the case of Ayman Nour, the politician who challenged President Mubarak in the 2005 elections. I don’t know the man personally, and I disagree with him on many things, but I defend his rights as a citizen. The government allowed him to set up the Ghad Party, but as soon as the party began its political activity by calling for constitutional amendments and presidential elections with more than one candidate, the government turned on it. Ayman Nour’s parliamentary immunity was lifted in ten minutes, he was detained, beaten, and humiliated, his wife was threatened with prosecution on trumped-up immorality charges if she defended him, and the government newspapers suddenly discovered that Ayman Nour was the worst person in Egypt and in the Arab world, guilty of every possible vice. The sycophantic scribes said that even his doctorate was a worthless fake. What was behind this volte-face? The government said it was prosecuting Ayman Nour because he submitted forged signatures when he applied to set up his political party, but this is an accusation that would not convince a young child. The head of a political party is not such a forensic expert that he can tell with his naked eye if the stamps on the documents are forged or genuine. Besides, by law a party needs fifty signatures to submit an application for official recognition, while Ayman Nour had collected five thousand signatures, so he had no need for forged signatures in the first place. It’s clear that the security agencies slipped in some forged signatures so they could use them to punish Ayman Nour if and when necessary. So the case against him is political, trumped up, and unjust, and it cannot be defended as legitimate. Naturally the western press treated the case as an example of how the Egyptian regime cracks down on its political opponents, at which point Egyptian officials made a great hue and cry, saying they categorically reject foreign interference. I have a few observations to make:
First, any Egyptian patriot opposes foreign interference in the country’s affairs for whatever reason, but it is truly surprising that the Egyptian regime objects to foreign interference only when it’s about repression against Egyptians. In all other fields the regime welcomes and seeks out foreign interference. In economics and foreign policy the Egyptian regime carries out U.S. instructions to the letter. In fact senior officials have expressed more than once their sympathy for the U.S. Army as it faces growing casualties in Iraq, and have publicly proffered suggestions on how to reduce the casualties. The Egyptian government has said it would be willing to train Iraqi policemen, to strike at the Iraqi resistance, of course, and where was its national pride then? Egypt has met every impertinent U.S. request without objection, from the release of Israeli spy Azam Azam, to sending the Egyptian ambassador back to Israel, to signing the QIZ trade agreement with Israel and the United States. So officials in Egypt have no misgivings about foreign interference in their affairs; in fact they seek it out, they boast of the special relationship with the United States, and, whenever someone tells them Egypt should have an independent national will, they accuse them of inflexible thinking and of being relics of the “totalitarian era.” But when the foreign intervention is about repression, detentions, torture, and the other crimes committed against Egyptians, only then do Egyptian officials say foreign interference is unacceptable and brag about national dignity.
Second, the United States is in fact the country least qualified to talk about democracy and human rights. The U.S. Army’s crimes at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are still fresh in the memory, and since the Second World War, successive U.S. administrations have consistently, in order to protect U.S. interests, provided support to the worst and most despotic Arab rulers. The U.S. record is even dirtier in Latin America, where, by the admission of its own officials, the CIA conspired to overthrow a democratically elected government in Chile in 1973, to kill Chilean President Salvador Allende, and to hand power to U.S. proxies. All this well-known history prevents us from trusting the United States when it talks about democracy. In fairness we should remember that the West is not just the United States and the imperial powers. There are hundreds of western NGOs, and the volunteers in these NGOs defend human rights as an ideal and expose rights violations everywhere, even in western countries. These organizations are respected, have a voice in the West, and have influence over public opinion there, more so than the governments do. Besides, as a matter of principle and of law, detaining and torturing innocent people cannot be considered part of a country’s internal affairs, because these crimes are against humanity as a whole and anyone has the right to condemn them. When the Egyptian regime detains three thousand people in al-Arish in Sinai for months on end without trial, tortures them, gives them electric shocks, and rapes women in front of their husbands and children, these heinous crimes cannot be considered an internal Egyptian affair, because torturing the innocent and violating their humanity is in no way a national matter.
Finally, I hope Egyptian officials realize that the state of affairs is intolerable and cannot continue. President Mubarak, after a quarter of a century in power, is preparing to organize a new referendum in which he will win 99 percent of the votes as usual so that he can stay in power forever, to be succeeded in office by his son, Gamal, and maybe Gamal Mubarak’s son after him. We have so much poverty, unemployment, rampant social injustice, repression, vote rigging, and abuse of innocents that life has become impossible for millions of Egyptians.
Important signs of change have appeared recently, and I hope officials understand them before it is too late. I hope they ask themselves: What is it that drove a well-known writer like Mohamed al-Sayed Said to confront the head of state with the truth about the grievous state of the country? How did the Kefaya movement come about and how was it able, in the space of a few months, to persuade thousands of patriotic intellectuals to join? What is it that drove university professors and respected citizens to go out in the streets and face the possibility of being beaten by an army of riot police simply in order to speak out and say “enough” to rule by Mubarak? Why did thousands of students from Cairo University assemble and force open the university gates so they could join the Kefaya movement’s latest protest? All of these are sure and unmistakable signs that c
hange is necessary and a price the regime will soon have to pay, whether it likes it or not. Egyptians have a yearning for freedom, justice, and a dignified life. This is the issue. To those who think they have a right to repress Egyptians, like Galal the butcher with his wife, we say, just as Awad the wise grain merchant said, “If you don’t want anyone interfering in your household, then you should show some self-respect.”
Words to ponder:
On January 24, Major Mohamed Farid, the head of criminal investigations at Mashtoul al-Souk police station in Sharqiya Province, tortured Mohamed Salem to force him to confess to a theft. This torture resulted in a fracture in Salem’s spinal column, which completely paralyzed both legs, made Salem an invalid, and led to fecal and urinary incontinence. (The Egyptian Association against Torture)State Security headquarters in al-Arish smelled of roasting skin because of the hundreds of detainees being tortured with electric shocks. (Al-Ahali newspaper)Human rights in Egypt have recently seen a significant transformation. (Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement)We assure you that Ayman Nour was absolutely not beaten. The injury under his left eye came about when his face collided with the finger of one of the policemen as he was being arrested. (People’s Assembly statement)Imagine, God forbid, what would have happened if someone less wise than President Mubarak were ruling Egypt.… It would have been a disaster. (Mustafa al-Fiki)Citizens must be informed in advance before the water is cut off. (President Hosni Mubarak)
On the State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections Page 8