When the Sphinx awoke : an eye witness account of Egypt’s revolution

Abstract

The one duty we owe history, said Oscar Wilde, is to rewrite it. Egyptians have done so twice in as many years – in 2011 and again in 2013. Here is my account of what happened. Now that our youth have freed my country, memories, emotions, incidents keep returning. For the sake of my grandchildren and their generation, I will try to recollect my impressions about those wondrous events, how they developed, their highlights, their low points, and their climax. My other objective is to explain to a wider audience what really happened. It is 2011 and Tunisia has already shed its dictator. The date of 25th January had been set for our uprising, well in advance, to coincide with the National Police Day. The protesters’ “Day of Rage” centred on the reign of the police state and its role in helping the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) monopolise political life. Police intervention included the rigging of election results, the systemic rampant arrests without warrants of political activists, torture in police stations and prisons, and the manhandling of protesters, especially their sexual assaults on female demonstrators. The protesters had three main demands: the resignation of the Interior Minister, Habib El-Adly, a term limit of two on the presidency, and an end to the 30- year state of emergency. At the height of the demonstrations, on 2 February 2011, Professor Marjorie Cohn, an authority on torture, published a study, citing the 2002 US State Department’s report, which stated that Egyptian detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks... forced to strip and threatened with rape”.1 President Hosni Mubarak’s much-delayed arrogant speeches inflamed the situation. The government’s cosmetic reforms and slow response to few of the protesters’ demands led them to realise that the only option left for change was wholesale regime change. Slogans in Tahrir Square changed accordingly to “Bread, Freedom, Social justice, Human Dignity” (`Aish, Hurreya, `Adalah Egtema`eyah, Karama Insaniyah). This white revolution triumphed over 30 years of tyranny that Egyptians were subjected to, by a combination of the vision, technological expertise and perseverance of the youths, in addition – crucially – to the armed forces’ tacit endorsement of their demands. When we worried that the demonstrators would suffer from exhaustion, or that the protests could fizzle out, a number of events outraged public opinion – one came to be called “the battle of the camel”, on 2 February. A British paper’s disclosure that Mubarak had transferred abroad billions of dollars he had swindled, stoked their anger further. Wael Ghoneim’s public breakdown in tears, on a TV channel, moved people. He had just been released, after being arrested and kept blindfolded in solitary confinement for 12 days, shortly after the protests began. The Egyptian Google manager in Dubai and online activist had attracted the government’s wrath for launching a Facebook page in tribute to his cousin, Khaled Said, tortured and killed by two under-cover policemen, in broad daylight. The demonstrators marched shouting “Selmeyah! Selmeyah!” (Peaceful! Peaceful!), waved our flag, and sang the national anthem in unison, “Biladi, biladi” (My country, my country). As they converged from Cairo’s various areas towards Tahrir Square, they appealed to the housewives on balconies to join them, and asked passers-by and shopkeepers to do the same. So, the crowds kept streaming to the square over the following days, and never lost their courtesy and humour. For 18 long days, those who remained at home like me held their breath. But then, I have never been good at protest rallies. A few years ago, my friend Dr Afif Safieh, the former Palestinian ambassador to London, Washington and Moscow, called me, “an intellectual guerrilla”. I am still doing what I do best for my beloved Egypt: support – and garner support for – the legitimate fundamental rights of the people.