“We are living a bad dream,” Moaz said to his younger brother Bilal. Moaz was headed to Istanbul, Turkey, where he had no friends, no job, and didn’t know the language. “Where am I going?”
“For now, just focus on getting out,” Bilal said.
The security officer at the airport recognized Moaz and questioned him for an hour, but his papers were in order. As much as the officer didn’t like Moaz, he had to let him go.
Within weeks, he was joined by dozens of acquaintances and former Brotherhood comrades. Ayyash also managed to slip past airport security and fly to Istanbul, where, despite his tense relations with the Brotherhood, he took a job with a Brotherhood-linked website. He worked as well on medical relief for Syrian refugees and also applied to master’s programs, still mindful of his dream of working as a presidential adviser.
“This is our life now,” Ayyash told me over Skype. “We will wait for another chance.”
Only a trace now remained of Tahrir’s conscience. Most Egyptians applauded the bloodbath and shouted down as a traitor anyone who questioned the military government’s violence. Almost alone in the secular political class, ElBaradei had spoken against the massacre at Rabaa. Even his timid critique, too late to make any difference, had disqualified him from public life in Egypt as voices began to converge into a single horrifying chorus. The public figures critical of the coup numbered at best in the hundreds: a tiny community of conscience. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the ex-Brother, never wavered. Nor did Amr Hamzawy, the liberal academic who had refused to join the mainstream revolutionary parties at the outset in part because he recognized the tenuousness of their commitment to liberalism. Among the youth, the Revolutionary Socialists and some well-known figures such as Alaa Abdel Fattah had maintained their integrity. The April 6 Movement had succumbed briefly to el-Sisi fever but by the time of the great massacre at Rabaa Square had regained sanity. Alaa, Ahmed Maher, and some others founded a new movement called “the Way of the Revolution,” a third front between Islamist and military rule. Few people paid it any heed. This small group included the only voices raised against military rule, against the idea that the correct response to the Brotherhood’s mistakes was to kill its leaders and outlaw its beliefs.
El-Sisi declared a preemptive war on terror, and jihadists obliged by providing terrorism for him to fight. Assassins tried to kill the interior minister. Suicide bombers struck for the first time in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the attacks, but it made no difference; the organization was blamed all the same. Takfiri jihadists from Sinai took responsibility for a series of bombings that targeted police in Cairo and other cities. In a perfect mirror image of what the Brotherhood had done when it was in charge, el-Sisi’s government convened a new Constituent Assembly that completely shut out the Islamists. Led by Amr Moussa, no enemy of the felool, a group of fifty establishment secularists wrote Egypt’s third constitution since Mubarak. This one preserved the secular nature of the state but spelled out the broadest protections yet for the military. The SCAF was snapping up lucrative contracts from the interim government, including hundreds of millions of dollars in construction projects.
The military was openly pursuing naked political power and crass riches while el-Sisi’s cult of personality blossomed. Anyone who didn’t like it was silenced. The popular comedian Bassem Youssef, who had been hounded by Morsi’s prosecutors but never taken off the air, found his show cancelled suddenly when he mocked the public obsession with el-Sisi’s manliness. Apparently it wasn’t acceptable to make fun of the ladies who proclaimed they wanted to leave their husbands for el-Sisi, or the bakers who decorated their pastries with the general’s portrait. The only politics allowed were el-Sisi’s politics. His emerging regime enjoyed tremendous popular support. For all the state-orchestrated propaganda and anti-Islamist hysterics, the acclaim for el-Sisi was genuine. Each of his repressive measures was welcomed and applauded. After three years of disappointing leaders, Egyptians were hungry for more than just charisma: they wanted someone who could get things done, and despite his flimsy record, they thought el-Sisi could be that man.
Basem only snapped out of his lethargy in late November, when the transitional government, whose prime minister hailed from Basem’s own Social Democratic Party, passed a law criminalizing protest. This was too much even for Basem and others who had been willing to team up with the military against the Islamists. He went downtown to protest the anti-protest law and narrowly escaped arrest. The last remaining activists at large were locked up, first for protesting without a permit, and then for a variety of incredible charges of fomenting violence. Alaa Abdel Fattah, Ahmed Maher from April 6, and most of the widely recognized faces of Tahrir were imprisoned, accused of undermining national security.
Zyad had been laying low since the events of the summer. His sponsor, ElBaradei, had been drummed out of politics. Zyad had always been a more pointed critic of Islamists than Basem and the other liberal revolutionaries were, but he didn’t want to appear to condone the massacre at Rabaa or the restoration of military rule. He had escaped a prison sentence for his comment about the field marshal and the donkey, so now he was biding his time. He tended to some duties in the Social Democratic Party, visited his son and ex-wife, and hung out in his small bachelor apartment. When el-Sisi’s constitution came up for a vote, Zyad tried to convince the Social Democratic Party to campaign against it. The protections it gave the military weren’t worth any of its good points, Zyad argued. True to its liberal charter, the Social Democratic Party hosted an internal debate on whether to endorse or oppose the charter. Zyad made his case, but the party members were eager to move on and get out on the stump; it was a chance to increase their visibility. They voted against Zyad and for el-Sisi’s constitution.
Dissent was silenced at a dizzying speed, crossing boundaries that had been respected even by Mubarak, the SCAF, and Morsi. Well-known human rights activists retired or took sabbaticals. Sally left Egypt for a spell. Supporters of the revolution renewed applications to study or work abroad. El-Sisi meant to remake Egypt, and quickly. Every week, Brotherhood supporters were killed and arrested. A group of teenage girls was sentenced to eleven years in prison for protesting in support of Morsi. A team of foreign correspondents for Al Jazeera English was arrested, accused of operating a Muslim Brotherhood terrorism cell; until now foreign journalists had almost always been left alone by the state. Members of Aboul Fotouh’s party who campaigned against the latest terrible constitution were arrested. Recordings of the private phone calls of activists began surfacing on proregime television channels. Some were blackmailed privately with threats that sex tapes or other embarrassing conversations would be leaked. The regime’s message was clear: criticizing el-Sisi was a crime. Independent journalism was a crime. Talking to Muslim Brothers was a crime. Opposing government policies was a crime. El-Sisi would do what he could to put the revolution to an end. Among Egypt’s fatigued citizens, he found millions of willing accomplices.
All that was left was to draft the revolution’s obituary. Those who still dreamed of revolution sought to figure out where they had gone wrong, how they had failed to persuade enough Egyptians that liberty and security weren’t mutually exclusive. Alaa Abdel Fattah sent letters from prison, which were published on the dwindling number of critical websites that remained. Moaz wrote passionate essays, which were occasionally accepted by newspapers; otherwise he posted them on Facebook. At the beginning of the revolution, Mubarak supporters had formed a group called “Please Forgive Us, O Leader,” apologizing for the Tahrir youth who were rudely disputing his rule. As el-Sisi promoted himself to field marshal and prepared his inevitable presidential campaign, Moaz recalled the firestorm that had engulfed Zyad when he likened the previous field marshal to a donkey. Moaz penned a parody of the felool credo: “Please forgive us, O donkey,” he wrote, a flowery apology to beasts of burden everywhere. The craven Egyptians who were voluntarily surrendering to the yoke of military fascism, Moaz wrote, did
not deserve to be compared with the oppressed but dignified donkey.
El-Sisi’s constitution passed with 98 percent support in a referendum in January. Weeks of smothering propaganda had urged a “yes” vote, and the last stragglers who urged people to say no were jailed as spies, traitors, or vandals. In a vast show of force across the nation, representatives of all the different security branches surrounded polling stations, outnumbering civilians on the street at any given time by a ratio of two to one. They meant to thwart any Muslim Brotherhood protests, and also to signal to the citizenry that the deep state was in better condition than ever. “The army and the people are one hand,” banners everywhere proclaimed while sound trucks played the promilitary anthem “Bless the Hands.”
Only the details of the restoration remained to be sorted out. Field Marshal el-Sisi would assume the presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood would weather another generation underground, and Egyptians would bow again under an incompetent authoritarian government that would promise stability and growth while delivering neither. For sixty years, the generals had controlled Egypt, and they’d never managed to provide liberty, economic prosperity, or dignity. On the third anniversary of the revolution, January 25, 2014, Tahrir Square was closed to revolutionaries. Only el-Sisi supporters were allowed, and they threw a grand coronation party funded and organized by the army. First-rate sound system, banners, and refreshments. Dissenters, real or perceived, were beaten. No one had to give an order. The people were fired up enough to do it of their own accord.
Basem had given up on his bigger dreams. His architecture business had dried up. His savings would last another few months. He didn’t know how long el-Sisi would permit political life to continue. His dreams of revolution had faded into something much more meager. Power lay out of reach, and so did the people. Now all that was left for him was to build something in politics that might serve the next generation: no longer the ambitious blueprint of a revolutionary architect but the workaday routine of an engineer. From now on, he was dedicated to training party members, giving them management and logistical skills, and a curriculum in social democratic political theory that he had spent a year developing. Many of the other party leaders were lazy, turning up only to give speeches or appear on TV. Basem thought the next opportunity would come in eight years or so, when el-Sisi would be wrapping up his second presidential term. That’s when a finely trained political party could compete for elections and public opinion as the Muslim Brotherhood had been able to do in the first rotation after Tahrir.
“You cannot have any more expectations of voters,” Basem said, slumped over the fading conference table in the Egyptian Social Democratic Party headquarters downtown. “We have struggled for three years against four different regimes,” he said. “All this time, we have been against the regime, but the people are against us. There is no way to succeed without the people’s support. The problem is not with the regime, the problem is with the people.”
The Social Democratic Party’s shabby headquarters never had been refurbished. I had sat in this corner room countless times in the three years since the revolution began, as the liberal brain trust hashed out its response to the different crises and opportunities it had faced. Now the office was quiet; nearly deserted. Basem’s eyes were swollen with tiredness, and his skin had dried into an ashen hue. He smiled less frequently, and his affect had flattened. The revolution had aged him visibly.
“I have changed my thinking,” Basem said. “We must not fight the dictator. We must fight to change the people. If they are hungry, they will not speak about democracy.”
It was time, again, for patient work. “People say I should go back home, to work, focus on my kids, but haram,” for shame, he said. “We shouldn’t lose all the investment we have made.”
Basem didn’t seem capable of facing the implications of his support for Tammarod. He despaired that el-Sisi would outlaw all dissent, but went about his business as if he and his Social Democratic Party bore no responsibility for the coup, the Rabaa massacre, and the political dead end that followed. “I didn’t support Sisi, I opposed Morsi,” he said. “Whatever we are now, it is better than the Muslim Brotherhood.”
For three years, secular and Islamist revolutionaries had failed to forge a shared vision of liberty and rights. Now they were all consigned to the same dreary fate. When and if they managed to create another day of promise, another January 25, 2011, another Tahrir Square, they would once again confront the same divisions. If they couldn’t square their divide, they would be doomed to another chapter of dictatorship.
After three years, Basem was no wiser about how to reach this promised land. His sense of mission burned steadily. He still wanted to build the political future he had envisioned while surfing Facebook years ago, but he had no clue how. He knew murder wasn’t the way, but the failure of Tahrir had nourished in him an abiding loathing for the Brotherhood. Unlike so many of his peers, however, he knew the Islamists had to be part of Egypt’s future.
“The Muslim Brotherhood cannot be finished in Egypt,” he said. “How can it? Can you kill Moaz?” He rattled off the names of other friends and activists, men and women who had come to the revolution from the Brotherhood.
“Can we kill all of them?” Basem mused. “If yes, then okay, the Muslim Brotherhood is finished. But we will not allow it. They are Egyptian, after all. They have the right to express themselves.”
In Istanbul, alone at a small desk, Moaz witnessed his first snowfall. He watched through the window as a drift piled in the alley by his apartment, while on his computer screen instant messages informed him that his last friend in Cairo was being snatched by police. The terrorism case against him was proceeding through the Egyptian courts. Moaz could face a serious prison sentence, depending on the whim of the prosecutor and the corrupted judiciary. He drafted a power of attorney so that his father could pursue his legal defense in his absence. Every thirty days, his tourist visa expired, and he had to travel for a few days to the only countries that would allow him entry: Lebanon and Qatar. Moaz was rattling about, unwanted in his homeland, undesired by the countries in the region, and distrusted by many of the exiles in Istanbul. Through everything, some had maintained their mindless obedience to the Muslim Brotherhood and considered Moaz a traitor to the supreme guide.
On one of his visa trips, he came to see me in Beirut. When we met, he was wondering how and when he could return home, back to Egypt and back in time to that alchemic moment when Tahrir Square had banished the dictator and rolled back the deep state. Before the quest for power had unraveled the revolution. It hadn’t been a dream. It really had happened. People had done it. They had changed. They had defied their own fates. They had rejected the status quo with utter bravery. Millions had revolted. Their psychological transformation had been complete. They had been nobody’s puppets. All this had happened. It could happen again.
For the first time, we enjoyed a stretch of time together uninterrupted by tear gas, mayhem, or political demonstrations. We sat in the garden. Paralyzed, following the deep state’s reemergence from a remove, Moaz was philosophical. He had always thought Egypt’s greatest problems were poverty and repression, and that democracy was the beginning of any solution.
“I thought we had transcended the fight between the Muslim Brothers and the liberals, but it is transmitted from generation to generation,” he said.
He whispered a short prayer before raising a forkful of food to his mouth. He had spent a long day recalling the massacre at Rabaa, enumerating crimes and betrayals great and small, including the revolutionary comrades who had countenanced the killing and the restoration of military rule. Many of them had regrets now, and Moaz, still able to slip into a Tahrir reverie, was ready to forgive and begin anew. “Democracy is for everyone,” he said. “I cannot judge people. Anyone who feels he is an angel should not live here on earth with the rest of us. If we want to cooperate with other people, we must cooperate with people who have made mistakes.”
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br /> He planned to stay close to Egypt and return the first moment he could, ready to make revolution again.
“We should respect anyone who wants to change the world for the better,” Moaz said. “The same things that united us before the revolution could collect us again.”
11.
THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES
The world seems to move faster now than it did a few centuries ago, but societies still change at a glacial pace. The marquee events of history give their yield slowly. America’s founders based the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; yet it took nearly one century for America to end slavery and another for it to establish equal legal rights for people of all colors. Similarly, in Europe, the 1848 uprisings challenged the anti-democratic ruling order at its core, but their ideals only ripened into practice a century later, once the Continent had hosted two catastrophic world wars. Maybe that’s how Egypt will turn out. January 25’s moment of promise might eventually translate into a new order of rights and dignity, after many decades. Power takes a long time to dislodge, and old attitudes even longer.
The most startling aspect of the Republic of Tahrir was the speed with which common people with no history of activism shed their fears of authority. The most startling aspect of the military coup of July 2013 was the jubilation it elicited from many of these same people. It was no surprise that the old regime returned with such vengeance, but it was a surprise to see who cheered. Among the throngs who anointed General el-Sisi savior of Egypt were people who had braved many army bullets during the past three years. Sure, many of the new junta fans were conformists, Mubarak remnants, stability addicts, uncritical parrots hungry for the structure of a strongman. Many, but not all. Those who dabbled in revolution and then supported the regime’s return remain a mystery. Why did they break the wall of fear in January 2011, and why did they decide three years later that they’d rather live under military rule again? Time will show us whether they really prefer dictatorship, in which case Egypt is doomed to a dark fate, or whether they have made a tactical choice (or are experiencing temporary fatigue) and will attempt to defenestrate el-Sisi in a matter of months or years rather than decades.
Once Upon a Revolution Page 29