http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php The thoughts of Samia Serageldin. en 2012-02-06T13:36:17 ramy@thecairohouse.com hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=279&c=1 2012-02-02T08:49:32 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General Today, February 4th, is the anniversary of the so-called ‘Battle of the Camel’, the decisive turning point of the Revolution of January 25th, when the peaceful democracy protesters in Tahrir were able to beat back a vicious onslaught by pro-Mubarak thugs who attacked them on horseback. A week later, Mubarak ...
Today, February 4th, is the anniversary of the so-called ‘Battle of the Camel’, the decisive turning point of the Revolution of January 25th, when the peaceful democracy protesters in Tahrir were able to beat back a vicious onslaught by pro-Mubarak thugs who attacked them on horseback. A week later, Mubarak resigned. Part of the credit for the push-back against the Mubarak forces went to the ‘ultras’, as the most extreme soccer fanatics are called in Egypt, akin to England’s infamous ‘football hooligans.’
Today, a year later, the soccer ultras are being blamed for a massacre on a football field in the town of Port Said on the Suez Canal; but the real question is, who put them up to inciting a riot? And the even greater outrage now debated in the extraordinary session of Parliament and everywhere in Egypt is this: why did the security forces stand by while Egyptians killed Egyptians? Why the lapses in security from the beginning, not only in the case of this soccer match, but in several suspicious incidents over the past week, and indeed the past month?
In the minds of even the least conspiracy-minded of Egyptians, one answer is inevitable: at the very moment when there is the most pressure to abrogate the loathed ‘emergency laws’ under which Mubarak ruled for thirty years, and now the SCAF rules with complete unaccountability- at that very moment, the incidents of suspicious random violence are multiplying. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the climate is being created in which the SCAF can claim that the people are fed up with the insecurity in the country and are calling for a return to the heavy-handed tactics of the police and the military.
Writing about the Nasser era in my first novel a decade ago, I had said that in Egypt, soccer rivalries replaced party politics in a country with a monolithic single-party regime that prohibited any expression of political opinion. In today’s post-revolutionary Egypt, the airwaves buzz with political debate and party politics are hotly contested at the ballot box and in the media. But at what price freedom? How do you explain the spectacle of Egyptians killing each other on a soccer field for no apparent reason? One year from the day when outrage against the thuggish tactics of the Mubarak loyalists united Egyptians behind the protesters in Tahrir Square, united them young and old, Muslim and Copt, secular and religious, ultras and ulamas; one year from that hope-filled day, Egypt’s Revolution seems to have gone terribly wrong.
]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=278&c=1 2012-01-25T13:16:57 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General Tahrir Today, the first anniversary. I was there, along with so many people I met whom I knew, famous writers, major businessmen, doctors, professors. An immense crowd, at least as big as February 4th, and the same spirit: determined but cheerful and peaceful. Men, women and children, many young people, ... ]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=277&c=1 2012-01-25T13:13:39 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General Egypt’s Revolution : First Anniversary, Part I So you had a revolution…and now, you have the first democratically-elected parliament in sixty years. Today was the day when the new parliament was seated, and all of Egypt watched the spectacle in the hemi-circle parliament hall as newly-elected candidates stood up to take ...
So you had a revolution…and now, you have the first democratically-elected parliament in sixty years. Today was the day when the new parliament was seated, and all of Egypt watched the spectacle in the hemi-circle parliament hall as newly-elected candidates stood up to take the oath of office- or didn’t. One presumably Salafi representative tried to put his own spin on the oath, which requires him to respect the republican system and the constitution. He was finally prevailed upon to read the oath as written, and the proceedings carried on smoothly from that point on.
So what does this new post-revolution parliament look like? As expected, there was a predominance of Muslim Brotherhood, stocky men in business suits, their facial hair neatly trimmed; but also the typical thin, long-bearded fundamentalist Salafis in robes; also a sprinkling of exotic men in red fezzes and odd dress, presumably Sufis. Then there were the sleek, clean-shaven representatives from the liberal parties, and the de rigeur fifty percent quota of ‘peasants and workers’, as per the existing constitution. Women were few; a cluster of them sat together front and center, in a rainbow of pastel hijabs: mauve, pink, blue.
For the liberal movements, as for the young revolutionaries who paid the price for this free election with blood and tears, the spectacle is bitter-sweet. They paid the price but saw the prize seized by the Islamist currents that had initially sat out the protests. But a young artist I spoke to yesterday at the opening of an exhibition at a gallery in Zamalek seemed to be optimistic. I was arrested by his large-scale painting of a woman lying on the ground, violated and near-naked, pain and dignity in her face; next to her on the ground were a riot police helmet and truncheon. The message was clear: the woman in the painting stood for all the women assaulted by the police and army since the revolution began.

The young artist in a black beret, an activist member of the new Tahrir Party, was not worried. “The Muslim Brotherhood will have to be pragmatic in office- the problems they are facing, economic especially, are so huge in scale that they will need all the allies they can get to spread the responsibility around. And in a year or two, at the next elections, we’ll be ready. We’ll claim our revolution.”



]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=276&c=1 2012-01-12T12:28:26 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General It's rather disconcerting, being in Cairo these days. I imagine it must be like looking through bifocal glasses: close up, daily life carries on as usual, the social and cultural calendar as busy as ever; but in the bigger picture, every day brings 'fresh alarms', and the current crisis in ...
There is a sense of an impending crisis to mark the milestone first anniversary of the January 25th Revolution. There are those who predict popular outrage if Mubarak is let off his trial without a guilty verdict, but almost no one who expects the actual death penalty called for by the prosecutor, and even fewer who would condone it.
Conspiracy theories are encouraged by the seeming collusion between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Military. At a book discussion yesterday attended by the author, Bahaa Taher, whom I'd met when sharing a panel a couple of years earlier, that was the scenario that dominated the discussion. Taher himself in no way underestimated the strength, organization, and professionalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he warned against taking their ostensibly moderate views at face value, recalling their history of international ambitions and ulterior motives. As for the Salafis, as one woman shuddered, "what they would like to establish in Egypt is Saudi Arabia without the oil."
There is some self-reproach but a great deal of frustration among women like her- the educated, privileged, secular elite- about their inability to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood in offering the kind of social services- educational, medical- that have bought the MB their support at the voting booth.
Meantime, life carries on in Cairo, but the outlying provinces, and especially the highways leading to them, are riskier to venture into. The Sinai in particular; St Catherine's Monastery, once a tourist mecca for international and Egyptian visitors alike, is a ghost town.
Ominously, the best and brightest young people, those with the most expensive educations and international experience, are starting to leave the country. But it's hard to blame them, when the latest scandal in the domestic media is the shocking political brainwashing cropping up in this year's middle school mid-term exams: "Write an essay on the great role played by the Supreme Military Council in recent events," runs one essay topic. "Write a letter of congratulations to the Muslim Brotherhood Party on their electoral victory," runs another. "Conjugate: the Revolutionaries have destroyed the country," runs a grammar exercise.

January 25th risks being the day the idealists of a year ago come back to Tahrir one more time to take back their revolution.
]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=275&c=1 2011-12-26T15:18:00 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General The day before, there had been thousands of people demonstrating against the brutal stripping and beating of women protesters at the hands of the Military Police. But on Saturday, when I went to Tahrir Square for the first time since March of this year, it was quiet and somewhat ... The day before, there had been thousands of people demonstrating against the brutal stripping and beating of women protesters at the hands of the Military Police. But on Saturday, when I went to Tahrir Square for the first time since March of this year, it was quiet and somewhat bedraggled: tattered flag banners ringed the remnants of a tent city served by makeshift stands selling tea or roast corn on the cob. Of the people lounging around, not all looked like young protesters; there were some older men in farmer garb and some who looked like homeless vagrants. There wasn't a policeman in sight, but car traffic circled around the square unimpeded under the direction of Tahrir civilian volunteers.
Earlier that week clashes had resulted in several deaths and scores of injured demonstrators calling for an end to the military power grab and an immediate transition to civilian rule. It must be a bitter irony to the young liberals who spilled their blood for that cause that those who stood to gain most by their sacrifice- the Islamist parties- had been conspicuously absent from the struggle. A transition to civilian rule would inevitably mean handing over power to a parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood who, together with the Salafis as a junior partner, have won the first two rounds of elections by a landslide.
There is that sense in Egypt today, of a revolution hijacked, gone awry. Some people shake their heads, speak of a lost generation, of emigration, if not for them, then for their children. Things will get worse before they get better, they say.
The anxiety over the economic crisis is the most acute and pervasive. A stark case in point is the Mena House Oberoi, the landmark hotel where world leaders once held meetings against the stupendous backdrop of the Giza pyramids. I had lunch there today, and it was sadly empty of guests: the vast expanse of hotel reception rooms and restaurants with their gorgeous Mamluke-style wood paneling and coffered ceilings, the pools, the annexes under construction, all empty but for a handful of tourists. Seeing me look around nostalgically at the familiar landmarks of one of the fabled hotels of my youth, the eager-to-please staff offered to show me the Churchill suite; they hope against hope for better days. But we all know that with some Salafi spokesmen spewing the most ignorant and prejudiced propositions imaginable on the media, the tourists were keeping away in droves.
A final incident comes to mind. On the way to the hotel via the Pyramids Road, traffic was so bad that we decided to try an alternate route on the way back- the 6th October Axis bypass. In the middle of the fast-moving traffic on the busy highway, an accident occurred. The engine of the car involved was spewing smoke, and the man in the car looked in imminent danger of the engine blowing up. While we were trying to figure out how to call the police, we saw a man on a passing bus leap off and rush to the aid of the trapped motorist, smashing the window to open the jammed car door. Hard on his heels came two other rescuers. All three of the Good Samaritans sported the typical Islamist beard.
]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=274&c=1 2011-12-20T07:55:34 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General My interview with Frank Stasio of NPR's State of Things runs today at noon U.S. East coast time. Frank will be asking about the state of Egypt today. In the week since I've been in Cairo unsettling events have cascaded one after the other. ]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=273&c=1 2011-12-13T02:46:33 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General At a recent reading, I am seated right next to the cartoon effigy of Daniel Wallace....

At a recent reading, I am seated right next to the cartoon effigy of Daniel Wallace....]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=272&c=1 2011-12-09T20:17:18 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for thirty years under emergency powers with the justification of ‘après moi le deluge’, an argument that played better in the West than at home. He presented his military-backed regime as the sole bulwark against the flood waters of fundamentalist Islam. Never mind that, in effect, ...
Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for thirty years under emergency powers with the justification of ‘après moi le deluge’, an argument that played better in the West than at home. He presented his military-backed regime as the sole bulwark against the flood waters of fundamentalist Islam. Never mind that, in effect, he was making the prophecy come true: by ruthlessly repressing legitimate opposition and emasculating secular parties, he left the field clear to the underground opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood; by supporting the unbridled greed of a narrow elite while ignoring the misery of the majority of the population, he left the door wide open for the Brotherhood to fill the tremendous gap in social services. For years, the Brotherhood accumulated good will, trust, and name recognition. When the revolution broke out on January 25th, the Islamists initially held back, letting the young progressives fight the good fight, perhaps as much out of calculation as prudence: their presence in the field in the early days would have allowed Mubarak to damn the uprising as ‘radical Islamist.’
And when the revolution succeeded, the Muslim Brotherhood were ready, the only organized party in a field of fragmented, chaotic, leaderless, secular start-up movements. This came as no surprise, but the unexpected took the form of the seemingly sudden emergence of a hitherto obscure sect who called themselves the Salafis, asserting a fundamentalist approach at odds with the Brotherhood’s moderate stance.
At the polls, the first-time voter- and all Egyptians are first-time voters, after sixty years of single-party rule and single-candidate presidential ‘referendums’- the first time voter was faced with a bewildering choice of deliberate complications: independent lists, proportional representation lists, a plethora of unfamiliar parties and candidates, an electoral sheet that would have baffled a nuclear scientist- in a county where thirty percent of the electorate is functionally illiterate. The election sheets actually featured dozens of random icons like a basketball or sunglasses to identify the parties for those who could not read the names. Not only is there no literacy test for eligibility to vote, there is a Nasser-era mandate that requires 50% of the seats in Parliament to be held by ‘peasants and workers.’ Is it any wonder that the hordes of the illiterate, downtrodden and newly enfranchised citizens wielded their vote in favor of the familiar name of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate?
So now the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is makes its power grab with the stern threat of their version of Mubarak’s conundrum: It’s the Military or the Islamists. The new constitution, according to the SCAF, will reserve supra-constitutional powers to the military and remove them from civilian scrutiny or control. No longer behind the scenes, the military will directly appoint the Prime Minister.
So what is the torn Egyptian liberal progressive to do? Uphold the principal of democracy even if it means letting the revolution he bled and died for be co-opted by an overwhelming Islamist majority government? Or endorse the military power grab as a secular counterbalance? Either way, his revolution has been hijacked: his choice is between the junta or the mullah.
There are two potential scenarios: an Islamic-leaning party wins in parliament, but proves to be a moderate and even competent custodian of the country’s economic and social good, as in Turkey and in Indonesia after Suharto’s fall. In the other scenario, Western powers intervene to nullify election results favorable to an Islamic party, as in Algeria, leading to a decade of unspeakably bloody civil war.
The Egyptian liberal prays for the first scenario, but knows that he must avoid the second at all costs.

]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=271&c=1 2011-11-23T20:54:11 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General The first inkling, for many of us in Cairo last February, was the sinister text messages that appeared on our cell phones. I remember my eighty year old mother calling me in alarm: “The military forces are sending me SMS (as text messages are referred to in Egypt) to tell ...
The Big Brother moment was chilling. But that was back during the honeymoon period with the military, when they were seen as protectors of the people from the abuses of the police and the thugs of the Mubarak regime. When the deposed president’s helicopter finally took to the skies on February 11th, bearing him away from Cairo, the military were credited with having given him the final ultimatum. In the days that followed, the SMS messages continued to pop up in our cell phone message boxes with directives to ‘go back to work, go back to school’. Now they were signed ‘the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’, a title ominously shortened to ‘the Supreme’ in Arabic newspaper headlines and given the acronym SCAF in English.

Even at the zenith of the military’s popularity with the people during the revolution, there were many, including me, who were skeptical that the generals, once they were in full control, would ever cede power again. After all, I grew up with the bitter legacy of a family devastated by an earlier ‘revolution’- the coup d’état of the colonels that deposed the king in 1952. What followed was sixty years of dictatorship by one military man after the other, Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak, backed by an all-powerful military-industrial complex. If July 23rd 1952 was a coup that later claimed to be a revolution, then January 25th 2011 had the potential of turning from a genuine people’s revolution into a silent coup by the generals. To many of my mother’s generation, it was déjà vu: it was revolution redux.

Today, nine months later, the worst fears are confirmed. Ahead of the first potentially free parliamentary elections, the SCAF seeks to arrogate supra-constitutional powers for itself and entrench its immense privileges and economic clout. The Armed Forces are squashing free speech and dissent with as heavy a hand as the reviled police ever wielded.

So it is time for the demonstrators to take to the squares again, in Tahrir, in Alexandria, and elsewhere around the country. Their courage, or their desperation, is nothing short of breathtaking. Particularly since, this time, the Muslim Brotherhood has abstained from joining in the protests, leaving the liberals and the students to battle the toxic gas and the bullets alone. In colluding with the military, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have betrayed their ruthless electoral ambitions and discredited themselves in the eyes of a large part of the population, including some of their own younger rank and file who joined the protests in defiance of directives to abstain.

The only predictable outcome of this second wave of protests with its rapidly rising body count is the postponement of Monday’s scheduled parliamentary elections. The liberals, for want of a better name for a faceless, leaderless and fragmented movement- the liberals welcome this outcome: if the election had gone ahead, returning a Muslim Brotherhood majority and entrenching the military’s supra-constitutional powers, the last chance for a civilian, democratic government would have been lost. The door might have clanged shut for another sixty years, and all the blood and sacrifice would have been to exchange one autocracy for a more authoritarian and sinister one. It remains to be seen what can be salvaged of the ideals of January 25th, and if a chaos-weary public and a crippled economy can withstand another trial by fire.


]]> http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=270&c=1 2011-11-18T14:46:48 samia (mailto:samia@thecairohouse.com) General As one of five editors, I am very excited about the just-launched South Writ Large online magazine of Stories, Arts, and Idea. It explores the South as state of mind, linking the U.S. 'South' with the Global 'South' in an increasingly connected world. An outgrowth of the meetings at UNC-Chapel ... ]]>